


Heureuse

by sheila_amour



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Illya is a good caretaker, Injured Napoleon, Light Angst, M/M, Not Quite a Slow Burn, author is pretentious on main, bad 60s references, cherry pastries, frankly too much about anna karenina, passages that read like a travelogue, the author reveals herself as a massive nerd for russian literature and the french language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-20 23:57:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17032353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheila_amour/pseuds/sheila_amour
Summary: For The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Winter Holiday Gift Exchange 2018. Napoleon is sent on a solo mission to Brazil while Illya stays behind to nurse a broken ankle. When Napoleon barely makes it back in one piece Illya takes it upon himself to take care of him until he's back on his feet again. Pining and troupes ensue.





	Heureuse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nixie_DeAngel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nixie_DeAngel/gifts).



> This turned out to be soooo much longer than I originally planned it to be I'm so sorry. I was going for prompt one and I hope it's what you were looking for! I had a lot of fun writing this for you and I hope you enjoy it and your holidays!

**Heureuse**

Napoleon throws a suitcase on the bed and Illya recognizes it as the one he bought after he lost his last one somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s made of soft brown leather, has more straps and latches than Illya thinks a suitcase ought to have, and is, allegedly, waterproof.

“New mission?” Illya asks him. He’s standing in the doorway, lured from his chess by the sounds of rustling in the closet and Napoleon’s muttered cursing.

“Mhm. Brazil this time.” Napoleon pulls at a leather clasp of the suitcase and Illya watches as he tugs a little too hard and accidentally rips a stitch. The edge dangles off, the brown thread already starting to fray.“Oh for the love of God.”

“Brazil is not bad,” Illya says.

Napoleon looks up at him then, a piece of hair tumbling over his face, “No, but the flight is sheer misery.”

Illya shrugs and Napoleon gets back to toying with the suitcase.

“You have Gaby to keep company.”

“I don’t, actually. She’s got something going on in France for a few days. Easy in and out mission. I swear she gets all the luck."

“Waverly is sending you in alone?” There’s a hint of concern in his voice, yes, but while Brazil may be a beautiful country the growing whispers of a potential coup and the general air of political discontentment don’t make it a place he would particularly like to see Napoleon sent into alone.

“No,” Napoleon says, much to Illya’s relief, throwing the suitcase open after undoing the final latch, “I’ve got some other agent going with me.”

He starts rifling through the closet, thumbing through the dozens of silk shirts, pressed pants, and expensive ties. “It was supposed to be you, but _someone_ had to go fracture their ankle outrunning a neo-nazi instead of just leaving him be so we could get out of the building.”

Illya knows Napoleon well enough to know not to read any meanness into the jab; he’s slowly grown used to, and maybe even fond of these friendly taunts.

He simply rolls his eyes. “Was necessary for mission.” It wasn’t, but Illya isn’t going to leave a neo-Nazi alive if he can help it. It was just bad luck he moved at exactly the right time to dodge the bullet _and_ have it shatter the window he was standing in front of. Napoleon had gotten the shot in the end, a stroke of luck as Illya’s ankle was throbbing and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could’ve kept up the chase.

“Anyway,” Napoleon says, his voice muddled a little by the closet door, “they’ve got me with that one agent from the Spain mission. Agent Carlson?”

Illya nods. Carlson was a good enough agent; quiet, friendly, highly intelligent. “I remember.”

“I do too, unfortunately. One of the most unbearable missions of my life.” He strides back towards the suitcase with his arms full of shirts, pants, and ties. He drops them all on the bed and carefully begins to fold them one by one.

“It would all be so much easier,” he continues, “if I could get you along with me, but you get to stay here with your books and drinks and chess.”

“The ankle is almost fine now. I can walk, no problem. Let me talk to Waverly.” It’s been a few weeks since the ankle incident and the man still hasn’t given Illya a new assignment. It’s almost irritating, the way he prattles on about recovery like Illya is some doll or damsel in distress that can’t take a fracture or two. Not even a bad fracture either; just a slight chip in the bone and he was walking on it by the second week. For certain Oleg would’ve had him back on his feet within a day, hobbling on through the streets of god knows where.

“It's no use; I’ve already tried,” Napoleon says and Illya notices he stacks his suitcase up the same way every time; shirts on the left, pants on the right, ties laid carefully on top. “He said you might try to insist you’re fine, but he still wants you to rest for another week or so.”

“When is the flight? I could be ready in a few days.”

“Tonight at ten. I’ve got to be at the airport in a couple hours.”

Illya checks his watch. It’s 4:57. “That soon?” he says.

“Aw, Peril. Are you gonna miss me?”

Illya feels the tips on his ears turn red. He does have an answer to that question, but he doesn’t really want to let Napoleon in on that particular information. “I just thought you would tell me earlier,” he says instead.

“I am. I just found out a few hours ago. One of those last minute things. Gaby’s driving me to the airport after dinner.”

“Is it a long mission?”

“I sure to god hope not. The shorter the time Carlson and I spend together the better.”.

“You do not seem to like the man very much.”

Napoleon _thunks_ the suitcase shut and sighs. “I knew guys like Carlson, okay? They don’t belong in espionage. They’re in it for themselves and nothing more. All U.N.C.L.E. is doing by taking him on is setting themselves up to get fucked over in the end. He’s a fine agent now but the second one of these bastards offer him more money than he can squeeze out of U.N.C.L.E. I promise you he’ll be gone like that.”

“You do not give him much credit, I think,” Illya frowns.

“I’m giving him all the credit he deserves. He’s selfish and an egoist and that’s that.”

“Do not be so hard on him, Cowboy. I remember when you joined U.N.C.L.E. you were selfish and egotistical too,” he jokes.

Napoleon’s eyes go icy hard, his hand freezing on the top of the suitcase. “I am nothing like Carlson, okay?”

Illya throws his hands up in surrender. “Okay, I am sorry.”

Napoleon turns to the latches of his suitcase; tightening them up, tugging on them to test their strength. Illya watches him and the way his hands move with such familiarity over it and he wonders exactly how many suitcases they’ve both packed over the years of their lives. He thinks it’s probably a lot.

“When will you be back?” he asks.

“It honestly shouldn’t take over a week or two, otherwise I don’t think Waverly would send me out with a different agent. You know how he is about those kinds of things.”

Napoleon casts one last look around the bed, eyes scanning the sheets for a loose tie or cufflink before he grabs the suitcase, ready to haul it next to the door; its pre-mission home.

“I suppose you’ll still be here with your vodka and chess by the time I get back,” he says to Illya with a smile, “Read some Pushkin for me, will you?”

Illya rolls his eyes. An inside joke– after one of their first missions Illya spent an entire week off couped up in his apartment, tearing through his old copy of _Eugene Onegin_. He’d told Napoleon and Gaby that he was too busy to go with them to their bars and parties, but before the week was over they raided his apartment and found him alone in his chair with the tattered paperback and a bottle of vodka and Napoleon _still_ hasn’t gotten over it.

“Have a good mission, Cowboy,” he says.

“Will do.” 

 

* * *

Illya had forgotten how painfully dull loneliness was.

Gaby left the day after Napoleon, coming over to Illya’s for a few minutes before she left to give him a kiss on the cheek and a promise that she’d be back in a few days with something special for him. Then they were both gone and Illya, thanks to that damn ankle, was left alone in his apartment. The first day wasn’t so long; he went out and got some much-needed groceries, cooked himself up a simple chicken soup from an old can in the back of his cupboard, and settled in for the night with a copy of _Les enfants terribles_ , a book he’d promised Gaby he would read at some point.

The days after that tend to drag on. He’s on day five so far and he hasn’t done much except read, play chess, and wander around New York. He begins to wonder how all of this seemed natural, how he was able to spend weeks at a time on his own, how he even preferred it that way. Now he can barely go five days without thinking of how nice it would be to hear Gaby’s off-key singing or Napoleon complaining about something he read in the newspaper. He supposes this is what getting ‘emotionally attached’ means.

Whatever it is it’s dreadfully tiresome. He finished the book within the first two days. To kill time he wanders in and out of bookstores, buying books he’ll try to get around to reading soon. They start to stack up and he makes a point of reorganizing his bookshelf so they all fit. Most of them he plans to read for himself, but he can admit he bought many of them for Napoleon; a few Louis L'amour westerns, old American classics, and even some translated French novels (though Napoleon has a personal vendetta against translations Illya doesn’t know French well enough to read the original texts) he knows Napoleon loves. Those he plans to read for himself. He’s already picturing Napoleon’s smile when he mentions them in a conversation.

He even tries cooking to keep busy. He’s lived alone long enough to know how to make the most basic of meals; sandwiches, spaghetti, canned soup and the likes (he’s also quite fond of American TV dinners; god bless American laziness), but they all taste bland on his tongue. For the last few months, Napoleon has been the one to cook for them. A dinner at Napoleon’s house happens three or four times a week so there’s really only a few occasions where he has to choke down lukewarm Campbell’s and a  week of it is an unbearable thought. By day three he is desperate. He can’t cook like Napoleon, god knows, but that’s not going to stop him from trying out some of the recipes he’s given him over the months. First he tries out penne alla vodka, ruins the sauce, and eats buttered penne noodles for dinner. The next night he goes lighter and makes himself an omelet with salad and sausage. He fails at flipping the omelet, but it’s still edible so he counts it as a win. Tonight he’s making meatballs for his spaghetti and, most daring yet, he’s attempting to make a pie. Peach and cinnamon. He cracks open a can of peaches and hears Napoleon’s ‘it’s so easy even you could make it, Peril’ in the back of his mind and smiles.

 

* * *

Gaby comes home the next day. She flings his door open, scaring him half to death, the world’s biggest pair of sunglasses perched on the top of her head.

“I’m back, baby!” She’s got a big bag in one hand, the other is gripping a bottle of wine.

Illya puts the book he was reading facedown on the coffee table. “How was France?”

“Just lovely,” she says, kissing his cheek before taking a seat on the sofa, “a four day in and out to return a lost diamond to a very beautiful countess. Why that was important to world security I have no idea, something to do with potential anti-communist plots I remember, but luckily the thieves were just some stupid boys. Easy.” She gives Illya a wicked grin.

“I got this bottle at a shop somewhere, can’t remember the name, but I’m sure Napoleon will. The bottle is for him, after all. I was told it’s some of the best wine in France.”

Illya studies it, with its peeling label and cracked lid. The bottle looks years old and Illya knows how Napoleon loves a vintage. “I’m sure he will like it.”

“Well, he better, it cost me a small fortune.”

Illya raises an eyebrow. “You mean it cost U.N.C.L.E. a small fortune.”

She shoots him a wink. “And for you,” she says, rifling through a shopping bag, “I bought this.”

She pulls out a silver box and hands it to him. His fingers trace the grooves of the name on the label, a French name, he thinks; he was never any good at reading Latin letters in cursive.

“Well,” Gaby urges, “open it!”

He does so carefully, removing the top and setting it by the chair. He then peels back layers of soft pink tissue paper to reveal a sweater, grey-black and soft to the touch. He pulls it out gently, feeling the fabric between his fingers, admiring the careful stitching at the sleeves. He smiles a little when he sees the turtleneck. She always knows exactly what to get.

“It’s beautiful,” he says.

“It’s cashmere,” she replies, “feel it.”

“I am. It is very soft. I love it.”

She smiles, a cigarette in hand. He watches her fumble twice with the lighter before she’s got it lit. Smoking is a new habit of hers, a vice she inherited from both of her partners, and one she’s become quite partial to.

“I’m glad,” she says, “You have so many sweaters in that drawer of yours, but they’re all black. I figured you oughta have some color in there somewhere.”

Illya laughs a little at that because he knows it's true; most of his clothes come in white, grey or black, an easy way the KGB taught him to blend into his surroundings.

“Just watch out, I’ll get you a navy one next.” She gives him another wink, leaning back into the sofa, legs crossed, elbow resting on her knee, cigarette burning down in between her splayed out fingers.

“Navy is Napoleon’s color; I do not think he will like that very much,” Illya jokes, they both know how fond Napoleon is of those navy suits. He says it brings out the color of his eyes.

Gaby rolls her eyes, waving that cigarette around; he’s always liked the way she smokes, like she’s some American movie star. “Napoleon would like anything on you.”

Illya shifts in his seat, the tips of his ears turning red.

“Have you heard from Napoleon?”

She shakes her head and her big, chunky earrings sway back and forth on her ears. “No, but I talked with Waverly and he says the mission is going well and to expect him probably around the seventeenth.”

The seventeenth. Five days away. Not that Illya is counting.

She taps the cigarette out in the ashtray after one last, long drag, smearing the ashes into the crystal. She gets up off the sofa, turning towards the windows and throws the curtains open with a quick snap. The July sun fills the apartment with a glaring light.

“Well, what have you been doing?” she says, “Not been cooped up around here, I hope.”

 

* * *

Ages go by and the seventeenth finally arrives. The days have passed by faster with Gaby around, dragging him out to different shops and restaurants, but the date has lingered there in the back of his mind. It’s been over ten days, the longest he’s been away from the American. So much for a ‘quick mission.’ At least, that’s what Illya is planning on telling him when he comes home.

Illya doesn’t know when to expect him so he rushes through breakfast and starts cleaning up his apartment. Then he regrets rushing through breakfast because there’s not much in the apartment to clean, really. Illya doesn’t keep much stuff around and the things he does are always kept in good condition. He toys with the idea of going out for an early lunch but he doesn’t want to miss Napoleon. He settles in for a beer and chess, he’s read so much these last ten days he thinks he might go blind if he so much as looks at another book.

Maybe it’s strange to expect him at all, but Illya does. Napoleon has been on a handful of solo missions since they joined U.N.C.L.E. and after every one he’s never failed to drop by Illya’s. The first time was to return a gun he borrowed, but after that his sole reason was just to say hello. Illya doesn’t mind it as much as he thought he would, and it saves him a phone call to Waverly to make sure he made it back safely. They’ve gone out for lunch a couple times when Napoleon’s flight came in sometime in the afternoon (‘god Peril, there’s nothing to eat in here and I’m starving’) and they eat and talk a little, but the others have been late nights and it’ll only be a couple minutes before Napoleon is off to go home and get some rest. Illya hopes this time is the former.

But the hours on the clock go by and his chess games begin to number up before he finally gets sick of it and reaches for a dictionary on his bookshelf. He’s been trying to learn French lately, but he’s not been having much luck. He has a textbook too, one he bought in a big bookstore downtown. He thumbs through his notebook and finds an empty page and starts drilling himself on irregular verbs. He tries to say them out loud as he goes along, but his tongue is used to Russian and not French and the words come out in a jumble.

When his frustration reaches its peak and he dares turn to the clock again he finds it reads 6:30. Maybe still enough time for dinner, he thinks.

When it reaches 8 Illya is sure they won’t be going out but if he knows Napoleon he’ll be dying for a meal. He’ll rummage through his fridge until he finds anything worth eating and scarfs it down, asking Illya with a mouth full of food if it’s okay for him to be eating it, though he’s usually disappointed with the contents of Illya’s refrigerator.

Illya remembers one night, one of the late flights, when Napoleon had been so jetlagged he’d stayed the night. He’d slept on the couch but by the time Illya got up he was already poking around the kitchen.

“Not even eggs, Peril?” he’d said, “everybody owns eggs.”

He then took Illya to a deli a block away from his apartment where there were all sorts of foods to choose from. Napoleon only got coffee and a bagel but Illya ordered latkes, eggs, an English muffin, and a plate of blintzes piled high with strawberries and whipped cream. He ate it all (minus a latke Napoleon had stolen while he wasn’t paying enough attention) within a matter of minutes, savoring each cottage cheese and strawberry bite of blintz. He’d just taken one of the last bites when Napoleon started laughing at him, a lopsided smile on his face.

“You have whipped cream on your nose.” He then reached over across the table, napkin in hand, and brushed it against the tip of Illya’s nose.

“There,” he said, “all better.”

Illya wanted to tell him thank you but the light caught him just then and the soft smile on his face seemed to glow and Illya felt his heart tighten so he just shoved in another mouthful of blintz. Napoleon laughed again.

Now Illya paws his way around the fridge, searching for anything he can make a half decent meal with. He has some leftover stuff to make penne alla vodka, but he remembers how that turned out last time and isn’t sure he dares a second attempt. He has some of Gaby’s leftovers, but she’d kill him for touching those so he leaves them alone. He looks around the fridge one last time and then up at the clock. Penne alla vodka it is.

He doesn’t burn it this time. Maybe there’s a little bit too much cream and he got anxious and took the noodles off too soon but it’s not half bad. Its thick with the smallest hint of a kick, leaving the aftertaste of cooked tomatoes in his mouth. He eats a small plate and leaves the rest in the pot for Napoleon.

By the time it’s ten o’clock he’s back in his chair, playing another round of chess, practicing some obscure moves he only half remembers his mother teaching him. He’d taken the vodka from the kitchen to the living room and being too lazy to find a glass has been drinking it straight from the bottle. As the minutes pass he begins to grow worried that the pasta will get cold and by the time it’s eleven the sauce is starting to harden in the pan. He scrapes it all in the trash; he can’t present it to Napoleon like that.

He scrubs the pot, wipes down the counter, and Napoleon still isn’t there. It must be one hell of a late flight, Illya thinks. A few minutes past midnight he casts the French and the chess to the side and picks up a book of poetry (not Pushkin this time) and finds comfort in its familiarity. He reads it cover to cover as he feels his eyelids grow heavy. He puts the book down by the chess, warm in the new sweater from Gaby, and spends the next few hours in and out of consciousness. Only musings on the whereabouts of Napoleon keep him awake.

It’s now two in the morning. Maybe Gaby’s intel was wrong, he thinks. But it never is; Waverly would tell her anything. She has the man wrapped around her little finger. Besides, she had actually spoken with Napoleon. He’d called her for information on someone or something, Illya doesn’t remember, but he’d told her to expect him the seventeenth. She could’ve misheard, but Illya doubts it. Still, it’s hard to ignore the time passing and the lack of the sound of keys rattling and the doorknob twisting.

 

* * *

Illya wakes up in the armchair with an uncomfortable pain in his neck. He must’ve fallen asleep there. The last thing he remembers was the clock turning 4:45. Napoleon hadn’t shown the entire time, and Illya doesn’t expect he came in between the time he’s been asleep and the present. A glance at the door shows it’s locked and bolted. No one came.

Perhaps his flight was an early morning flight and he didn’t want to bother Illya. Or maybe he just forgot. Illya decides to call his apartment and check. He sits and listens to the phone ring again and again until a few minutes pass by and the operator is asking him if he’d like to try again. He says no thank you and hangs up. Then his fingers spin the number for Gaby’s room, hopeful that she’ll have some information for him.

She answers the phone with a “hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Oh, hi Illya. What’s up?” There's the faint sound of music in the background, probably one of those Britpop bands she’s been getting into lately.

“Have you seen Napoleon?”

“No, but he was supposed to get home last night.”

“I called his room. He did not answer.”

Gaby gives him a bored, slightly exasperated sigh. “Maybe he went out for a bit. Maybe he’s still sleeping, I don’t know. He promised he’d meet me at five for dinner.”

That makes sense to Illya. Perhaps he’s a little jealous that Gaby is the first one Napoleon wants to see but he ignores that feeling because it’s childish. Gaby is a partner to Napoleon, just like he is.

“Alright, thank you, Gaby.”

“Uh huh.” The phone hangs up with a sharp  _click_. Illya sighs, assuming it’s probably too much to hope that Napoleon will want to stop by before he heads over to Gaby’s. And he’s starting to get sick of this apartment. He slips on a jacket and heads downtown to find something to eat. Maybe strawberry blintzes. 

 

* * *

It’s seven o’clock when the phone rings. Illya gets to it by the fourth ring, his heart beating a little faster as he approaches, hoping to hear a familiar American voice on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” he says.

“Hey Illya, it’s me.” His heart sinks a little. The voice on the other line isn’t American at all.

“Gaby?”

“Yeah, listen. You remember how I said Napoleon was supposed to meet me at five? Well, he still hasn’t shown up. Didn’t even call to cancel.”

That doesn’t sound right. Napoleon is first and foremost a gentleman and he would never break off an engagement without calling first, it’s one of his unwritten rules. Radio silence is the last thing either of them would expect from him and it makes Illya a little nervous

“You are sure it was at five?” he asks, hoping to find a simple solution to this that isn’t Napoleon lying dead in the Amazon River.

“I’m certain of it. I had it down on my calendar and everything.” Gaby pauses. “ I tried ringing his room, too. He didn’t pick up.” Another pause. “Illya I’m starting to get a little worried. Maybe we ought to swing by his apartment and check? I know it might be overreacting but better safe than sorry, no? I could pick you up in about ten minutes if that’s alright.”

Illya nods, even though Gaby can’t see him. “Sounds fine.”

 

* * *

Gaby talks Illya’s ear off with theories the entire way there. Perhaps his flight was delayed, perhaps he went out and lost track of time, had to do some paperwork before dinner so he could be caught up, the mission went longer than expected, etc. He lets her talk because he knows she’s trying to calm her own nerves but the talk only makes Illya jumpy. He watches the buildings pass by in a blur as Gaby sails down the street, going ten over the speed limit.

They take the stairs up to the third floor because they’re too impatient to wait for the elevator and Gaby, who apparently has copies of all of their keys, opens his door.

“Napoleon,” she calls out, her heels leaving little marks on the plush hallway carpet.

Illya trails behind her as she walks through the place, looking for signs of life. No keys hanging up on the hooks by the kitchen. No suitcase or shoes by the door. He peeks his head into his bedroom and the bedsheets are still made and nothing looks as though it’s been touched. He steps inside, careful not to touch anything himself and disrupt the order of the room. Carefully, he pushes the closet door open and is greeted by the sight of several empty spaces were certain suits and ties belong.

“Gaby,” he says softly, his fingers running across a silk shirt hanging up in between a sea of empty hangers, “he’s not here.”

“What did you say?” she asks, stepping through the double doors of the bedroom.

“He’s not here,” he repeats, louder this time as he steps away from the door. “His clothes are gone. He has no shoes. I think if you check in the fridge there is no food.”

Gaby gives him a concerned look and walks out the door. A few minutes later she calls out, “You’re right. There’s no food in this fridge.”

Illya was expecting that but the reality of it doesn’t settle any better. He steps out of the bedroom after gently shutting the doors to find Gaby sitting on the sofa, cigarette in between her lips, fumbling with a lighter.

“Hey,” he says, giving her shoulder a light squeeze. He takes the lighter from her hand and slips it into his pocket. “We do not know what happened. Could be anything, like you said.”

She slips the cigarette back into her purse and sighs, running a hand over her face.

“Have you called Waverly?” Illya asks.

She springs up immediately. “I can do that,” she says. She picks up the phone by the liquor cabinet and spins the number in, sinking into the little chair a few inches away.

“Hello? Alex, it’s Gaby. You said Napoleon was coming back the seventeenth, right? Illya and I are at his place right now and he’s not here. Is the mission running long?”

Illya watches her face as she listens, eyebrows knit, heeled foot tapping impatiently on the floor.

“What? What do you mean?” She pushes herself up from the chair with a hand on the armrest, the other has a death grip on the receiver.

Illya is on his feet in a second, hovering over Gaby, trying to hear what Waverly’s saying on the other line but it’s not working; everything he can make out is muttered and muted.

“Oh my god, when?” Gaby runs a hand through her hair and her bangs go sticking out in a hundred different directions. Illya cranes his neck to hear better and he still can’t understand a thing.

“Three days! Jesus, Alex I—” Illya yanks the phone from her hands, pressing the receiver to his own ear.

“What is going on?” he asks.

Waverly’s voice on the other end is pleasant and professional. “Mr. Kuryakin, I was just explaining to Gaby–”

“Where is Napoleon?”

“Well, you see we’ve had a bit of trouble over in Brazil and–”

“Where is he?”

“He’s in the hospital, Mr. Kuryakin.” Oh. Illya’s stomach twists.

“How long?”

“Three days, still unconscious. We didn’t want to bother you–”

Illya feels his hands start shaking, red starts to creep into the corner of his vision. He squeezes his fists hard enough to draw blood. “Didn’t want to bother?”

“– as we didn’t know exactly when he’d wake up. If he wakes up.”

“He is..” Illya can’t get the words to come out so he swallows them down. “Which hospital?” he says eventually.

“Mr. Kuryakin I really don’t think–”

“Which hospital?” He repeats.

Waverly sighs on the other end of the line. “It’s a bit out of the way I’m afraid. Put Gaby on the line and I’ll give her the address. Oh and Mr. Kuryakin? It’s a state of the art hospital, all very expensive. Please do not break anything.”

 

* * *

Waverley was right; the hospital was out of the way. It was upstate about an hour and a half but Gaby managed to get through it in a little over an hour.

They storm into the hospital, past the front desk, security not bothering to stop them. As she walks through the hallways, searching for Napoleon’s room, Gaby calls out to no one in particular:

“Where’s Alex? Get me Alex.”

Nurses and personal scurry on past them and Illya glares at them. They part for the two of them with ease; Illya’s learned a long time ago that no one wants to say no to a six foot five Russian with anger issues.

It only takes a few minutes for Waverly to appear in the hall. “Mr. Kuryakin, Miss Teller,” he greets them.

It takes all Illya has in him not to slam him into the wall, “Where is he?”

“He’s down the hall, but he’s not really in a state for visitors.”

“What room?”

Waverly sighs. In that moment it’s evident how tired he is; black circles rim around his eyes, his skin looks pale and his hands reek of nicotine. Illya almost feels sorry for him. Almost.

“105. Just a few doors down on the left.”

Gaby, who apparently does not share Illya’s sympathy,  gives him a glare and then takes Illya’s hand as she leads him down the hallway.

She opens the door to room 105 and they quietly step inside. The room is silent aside from the beeping of the monitor next to Napoleon. The man himself is laid out on the bed, one arm in a plaster cast, bruises blossoming across his face, a particularly nasty bruise on the left leg, and various cuts and scrapes cover the rest of his body. Beside him Illya hears Gaby catch her breath. He squeezes her hand.

“Head injury is most of the trouble,” a voice says. Illya turns his head around to find a small woman with a clipboard standing in the doorway, Waverly behind her. They step into the room and close the door with a soft _click._

“The head is going to be the biggest problem, a skull fracture, likely no blood clots but we can’t be certain just yet. Maybe a concussion. There’s the cold as well; we found him completely drenched outside São Joaquim in July. The temperatures don’t get too low, rarely below freezing, but he still had us worried for the first couple days. At the beginning we weren’t sure if he’d make it or not; after all, it had taken us two nights before we found him. Fortunately, we’re almost certain he’ll make it now. He’s got a nasty fracture on that right arm, and his ribs are bruised but that’s better than cracked. He’s been in an out of consciousness since the second day and seems to be at least somewhat aware of his surroundings. If we can guide him into full consciousness soon it’s likely that the damage will be minimal. Maybe a few bouts of missing memories from the evening and a few days in the hospital just to make sure there isn’t any brain damage.”

Illya breathes a sigh of relief. Over the phone Waverly made it sound much worse. Still, he wishes Napoleon were awake or wasn’t in that bed at all and instead wiping whipped cream off his nose in a cafe somewhere.

“I can give you two a moment alone with him if you’d like?” The nurse asks, her blue eyes full of compassion.

Illya nods. He doesn’t see them exit but he hears the door shut. His feet drag him to the edge of the bed and he studies Napoleon’s face. The skin is dry in some places and starting to peel away. His jaw is purple and green and there’s a ring of black around his left eye. Illya wants to reach out and grab the hand without a cast, but the scratches and peeling skin stop him; the hand looks so fragile and Illya doesn’t want to break it.

He hears Gaby’s voice, scratchy and soft. “Do you want me to get you anything?”

He looks over at her, with her messy hair, bitten lip, and tears welling up in the corner of her eyes. She’s trying hard to not look at Napoleon’s body.

“Some water, please,” he whispers. She nods and steps out of the room.

He watches Napoleon still, willing him to wake up, trying to catch even just a flitter of his eyelids. Outside the room he hears voices, Gaby’s the loudest of them. She’s cursing out Waverly. The thick doors and hospital walls swallow most of the sounds but he can make out muffled words every now and again such as ‘partner’, ‘decency’ and most often ‘fuck’, usually with a ‘you’ tacked onto the end of it.

Minutes pass by and Gaby comes back into the room, a plastic cup of water in hand. It’s about half empty.

“Sorry,” she says, “I drank some of it.”

“That is okay,” he shrugs and throws the water back with a few gulps. It’s warm and tastes like minerals.

“Would you like another one?” Gaby asks and he shakes his head.

Together they stand in silence at the edge of the bed, just watching. Illya’s hands find themselves on the side bars of the bed, the closest he can allow them to get to Napoleon. The monitor keeps on beeping and Napoleon doesn’t move; everything is so still it could be a photograph.

“Ask Waverly if I can stay here tonight,” he says, staring at the pattern of pale green circles on Napoleon’s hospital gown.

“Illya–”

“He listens to you. He will let me.” Gaby opens her mouth to protest and his grip on the bar tightens. “Gaby, please.”

She looks at him for a while, her eyes searching his face. “Alright, I’ll ask. But only on one condition.”

Illya raises an eyebrow at her.

“You let me bring you something to eat for dinner and you go home in the morning to get some rest.”

He closes his eyes, nodding. “Okay. Alright, that is fine.”

“Okay.”

They sit there with Napoleon for a few hours until the sun starts setting outside the window. Gaby forced him to choke down some salad and bad chicken from the hospital cafeteria but those were the only moments they had left his bedside. They sit in the uncomfortable green chairs and wait, the clock ticking rhythmically in the background. Gaby looks down at her watch and yawns.

“Traffic has probably cleared down, and it’s getting late. I ought to head home now.”

Illya nods.

“Call me if anything happens, okay?”

“Okay.”

She gets up from her chair, takes a look around, her finger fidgeting absentmindedly with each other. She takes a step toward Napoleon, bends down and whispers something Illya can’t make out. She kisses his forehead. Her hands comb through the hair on his head.

Then it’s Illya’s turn for a kiss, on the cheek as usual “Goodnight, Illya. I’ll be back in the morning.”

“Goodnight, Chopshop Girl.”

 

* * *

Hospitals are lonely at night. The room is deadly silent, Illya can only make out the sounds of the monitor and his own breathing. From the window he can see the blurred lights of the city in the distance, but the room is too far up and he is too far away to make out any of the cars or people down below. There’s a dim lamp in the corner that lets him see shapes and silhouettes of objects in the room. He can make out the curtains, the bedside table with the glass of water, and most importantly the figure of Napoleon’s body lying on the bed. It’s that figure his eyes are attracted to the most; no matter how far they wander they always return to that same place. Each time he looks over he hopes to find him awake; yawning and blinking sleep from his eyes, asking Illya where he is.

But he doesn’t. He remains unmoving on the bed, the rise and fall of his chest the only indicator that he is still alive. It’s then in the darkness that an overwhelming wave of hopeless comes over him. He could’ve prevented this. He could’ve called Waverly and begged him to let him join Napoleon. They could’ve waited a few days. He could’ve looked more into what the mission was about. Hell, he still doesn’t know how Napoleon ended up in that damn hospital bed.

_If only I had been there,_ he thinks, _and none of this would’ve happened_. They would probably be at Napoleon’s right now, Gaby wine-drunk and Napoleon hiding her keys. He’d give Illya a wink as Illya would, as always, offer to drive her home. Or maybe they would all be draped over the couches and chairs in the main room and Napoleon would tell them one of his stories from his days as a thief. He was a good storyteller; he had a way of enthralling his audience, something enticing in his voice that Illya’s ear would get addicted to hearing. Or maybe it could be a night where Gaby was out on a date with some agent from U.N.C.L.E. and it would be just Napoleon and Illya together, eating one of Napoleon’s homemade meals and talking about books, travel, and anything else they could think of. Illya would tell him about the westerns he bought and how he thinks Napoleon will love them, his being a cowboy and whatnot. And he could bring up his French. That would make Napoleon smile.

The what-ifs swirl around in his mind as his eyes pass over the same familiar objects, watching the shadows twist and mutate against the whitewashed walls, almost glowing in the moonlight. The night grows darker and the room is full with a certain stillness. It tries to lure Illya into sleep with it but he wakes up every few minutes, still hoping Napoleon might be awake when he opens his eyes.

 

* * *

This marks the second day in a row Illya has woken up with his neck in a knot. It’s these damn chairs he keeps falling asleep in; they strain his neck more than they should. He cracks it back and forth, still a little sleepy from the lack of sleep he got last night, the room blurry around him before he blinks and brings it back into focus. The sun is shining outside the window and the clock in the corner reads 8:04. It’s finally morning. Illya feels lighter with the sun on his cheeks, shining over the whole room in slats from the blinds, and he gets the feeling that today is going to be a good day. He turns over to look at Napoleon’s body, still unresponsive. He should’ve known the feeling was too good to be true.

That thought is confirmed when the nurse comes in a few minutes later and updates him on the situation. So far, no different. Little glimpses of consciousness but no more. Exactly what he expected.

When Gaby arrives an hour or so later he gives the same information to her disappointed frown. She, however, had some news for him. She handed him a yogurt (cherry, a favorite flavor of his) and explained the basic intel from the mission she managed to get out of Waverly.

It was a long story, full of nuances and little details that went over Illya’s head but it essentially went more or less like this: Napoleon and Carlson were sent to southern Brazil in order to grab some intel on a potential US-backed coup. Getting this information required mixing in with some of Brazil’s top political and military leaders, ultimately landing them in the middle of a political conspiracy. It turned out that they both had some information they were looking for as well; some of the intel from the Spain mission apparently vital to their cause. One wrong move or getting caught certainty should’ve spelled certain death. The rest is uncertain, as communication with Napoleon had ceased by then but Waverly and the other top agents at U.N.C.L.E. have a pretty good idea of how things went.

Their best guess is Carlson slipped up, got caught, and managed to bargain with them with U.N.C.L.E.’s information in exchange for his freedom and a heavy reward. Carlson had gone off the grid a few days before they found Napoleon after withdrawing all his money from his US bank account. They were able to trace the money to a Brazilian bank, where the sum had nearly doubled. Napoleon at that point was expendable at best and at worst a threat to the conspiracy. He’s probably lucky he’s not dead.

The yogurt starts to churn in protest in Illya’s gut. He knew something was wrong with that mission. He shouldn’t have let Napoleon go with an agent he didn’t trust. He’d complained about the man and Illya had written it off but he should’ve listened; Napoleon was right. He looks at Napoleon’s body and thinks  _this is all your fault._

 

* * *

He stays a few more hours with Gaby, still in the stiff green chairs, reading books and hoping for something, anything at all to happen.

He starts yawning and stretching and by lunch Gaby has remembered their deal to send him home in the morning.

“Illya,” she says when he starts to protest, “you need sleep. You promised.”

He sighs. He did, after all, promise.

He’s been thinking too much lately and doesn’t think he can handle a bus ride home with an hour of nothing but him and his thoughts so he asks Gaby if he could borrow her car. He tells her he’ll come back after dinner to return it but she tells him not to bother; she’ll spend the night with Napoleon tonight. Illya wants to protest but there’s something in her face that stops him. She looks sad, nervous, and exhausted.

This time he’s the one to give her a kiss on the cheek. “Tell me if anything happens, okay?”

The drive was a mistake. He tries blaring music, tries speeding through traffic to get his mind off Napoleon but his thoughts keep circling back there. He doesn’t want to think of what had happened to him, but his imagination runs wild: a steel pipe, waterboarding, electrocution; his brain has an endless supply of scenes for him to watch. And each scenario only fuels the same thought, over and over: _this is all your fault._

When he gets home he is exhausted. His head hurts, his muscles ache, and his neck has been loudly protesting any sort of chair for the last several hours. He pops two sleeping pills before he throws himself onto the bed and crashes within minutes.

 

* * *

He wakes up to his phone ringing in the living room. Bleary-eyed he casts a look over to his alarm clock and finds it to be a little after 3 am. He’s been asleep for almost ten hours. He rolls over to go back to sleep but the ringing is persistent and is starting to creep into his headache.

Only half-awake he stumbles out of his room, a blanket wrapped around him. “Hello?” He mumbles into the receiver.

“Illya, oh Illya, thank god.” Gaby’s voice is frantic on the other line and Illya wakes up instantly.

“What is it? What happened?”

“He’s awake.”

“What, when?”

“Just a few minutes ago. I called the nurses in and they called the doctors. They’re with him now.”

“I am coming right now, okay? Just let me get my shoes on.” He slams the receiver down and races to tug on an old pair of work boots, not bothering to care about the rumpled look of his clothing. He only stops for a second to get something from the bookshelf before he grabs the keys, throws on his jacket, and races out the door.

 

* * *

He makes the hour and a half drive in an hour flat. He rushes up the flights of stairs to Napoleon’s floor, trying to make out Gaby in the sea of nurses swarming the hallway, all making their way to and from room 105.

She finds him before he finds her and he feels her tug on his jacket sleeve. “Illya,” she says.

He turns around on his heels to face her. “How is he?”

Her hair is messy; half of it has fallen out of her ponytail. Mascara has smudged itself underneath her eyes and at some point in the evening she had taken off her earrings. She gives him a helpless shrug. “I don’t know; the doctors are with him but they haven’t told us anything. We’re not allowed in. They told me we could wait out in the lounge. There are some chairs there.”

He nods and follows her down the hall, craning his neck to try to see through the small window as they pass Napoleon’s room but all he can make out is the back of a nurse.

The chairs in the waiting lounge are no more comfortable than the ones in the room. The only difference between the two is the orange color these ones have been upholstered with instead of the sea green of Napoleon’s room. Either way they are ugly and uncomfortable and Illya has a hard time squeezing his form into these tiny chairs.

There are magazines littering a table in front of them but neither one feels like reading at the moment. They sit together in silence, holding hands, as they cast glances down the hall in hopes that a nurse or a doctor will explain to them what’s going on.

It takes at least twenty minutes for the first update. A frazzled nurse steps out into the waiting room and calls them by name. They practically jump from their seats to get to her. She explains that he’s awake and responsive but the doctor, Dr. Ramirez, wants to run a few more tests on his brain to check the skull fracture and look for potential blood clots.

They’re then left to sit back down once again, Illya focusing on the pattern of the carpet; the little circles of red and gold that intertwine and overlap. He tries not to look at the clock and count the minutes but it’s a fruitless endeavor. He can’t keep his eyes off of it. The hands on the clock circle around and around until an hour passes and Doctor Ramirez is finally ready to speak to them.

“The skull fracture isn’t bad, but we’re going to want him here for a few more days just to make sure there’s no clots or swelling. We haven’t found any yet and honestly I don’t think it’s likely they’ll develop over the next week or so. His arm will take a considerable time to heal; the fracture split the bone in three places and we had to put some pins in but thankfully it’s the left and not the right. He might be somewhat limited with its movements in the future but with physical therapy it should be fine. And the ribs were only bruised, not cracked. Some mild hypothermia but nothing too bad. Essentially, your friend is a very, very lucky man. In the hands of a different hospital he could very well be dead by now.”

“But he’s going to be okay?” Gaby asks.

Dr. Ramirez’s eyes soften as he looks down at her with her smudged makeup and messy hair. “Yes, Miss Teller. It will be a few weeks before he’s back on his feet but he should heal just fine.”

“Can we go in and see him?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s quite in a position to receive visitors right now. He needs rest. You both do, it’s getting very late. If you come in the morning you should be able to stop by for a few hours. I imagine he’ll be happy to see you.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Before I go can I leave something with you?” Illya asks as Dr. Ramirez begins to turn away.

Dr. Ramirez stops. “That depends,” he says.

“Can you give Napoleon this book, please? If I know him he will be very bored here.”

Dr. Ramirez takes it from his hands, flipping through the pages for a brief moment before he slips the paperback into his coat pocket.

“I’ll put it next to his bed on the table.”

“Thank you, Doctor.” Illya looks him in the eye so he knows he’s thanking him for more than just the book.

“Don’t mention it. I’m just doing my job. Be here around ten tomorrow; the nurses will know to let you in.”

 

* * *

They get to the hospital a little before ten, but the nurse lets them in anyway. They haven’t said it out loud but they’re both nervous. Illya can’t put his finger down exactly on why.

He still feels on edge when they step in the door and Napoleon is grinning at them, but he does feel a wave of relief run through his body. He’s very much missed that grin.

Gaby rushes over to him immediately and throws her arms around him as best as she can with the awkward angle of the hospital bed. She then leans on tiptoes to give him a kiss on the forehead.

“You scared the fuck out of us, you bastard,” she scolds, causing a bought of laughter from Napoleon.

“Oh, Gaby,” he says, “it’s good to see you.” He looks up in Illya’s direction, “You too, Illya.”

“Glad you’re alive, Cowboy,” he says; the stupidest thing he could’ve said, but at least it makes Napoleon smile.

“Never change, Peril, never change.”

“You look like shit,” Gaby says like she’s just now recognizing and categorizing his bruises. Illya knows them almost by heart now.

Napoleon laughs. “Blame that on Carlson, the son of a bitch.”

“Waverly told us some of what happened, but it was all just theories.”

“Well, we got ourselves into a hell of a mess. We were  _so close_ to getting the documents too if it weren’t for fucking General Araújo. He caught Carlson slipping out from a party we were at in his country home, looking for his safe. Carlson told him everything about U.N.C.L.E. in exchange for his life and half a million dollars, or at least that’s what he henchman told me when they dragged me out of my room that night. In my pajamas, I might add. If you’re going to kill a man at least let him put on a good suit first. Anyway, they dragged me to this little creek, I think it was snowing a little but I don’t remember. All I remember was it was fucking cold and they didn’t let me put any shoes on. They beat me up a little, hit me over the head with a tire iron and threw me face down in the creek bed. Not very effective hired killers, thank god; they didn’t even check to see if I was still alive by the time they left. Guess they thought the cold would kill me if the tire iron didn’t. It really was a dreadful night. I rolled over out of the creek and that’s all I remember before I blacked out. Next thing I know, I’m here.”

He glances down at his arm; studying it, trying to move it back and forth in its plaster cast without much luck. “The arm though; I have no idea how that happened. Do you?”

“The doctor said it was broken in three parts,” Gaby suggests helpfully, “there are some pins in there too.”

“Great,” he sighs. There’s more than a little bitterness in his voice.“Do you know what happened to General Araújo?”

“Waverly’s got some agents on him, a few more trying to get Carlson. Illya tried to volunteer for the mission but Waverly said it was under control.”

That was true, Illya had asked to be part of the mission. But the reason Waverly gave him was his being ‘too emotionally invested’, whatever the hell he meant by that Illya didn’t know.

They pass the rest of the time with Napoleon and Gaby swapping mission stories; Napoleon filling her in on Brazil and Napoleon taking great delight in Gaby’s adventures in France, particularly her romance with the Countess.

“I still can’t believe it. You _always_ get the best missions.”

Gaby shrugs, a grin on her face. “I bought some wine for you, for once you get home. It’s a vintage.”

Napoleon’s eyebrows raise. “A vintage? Why Miss Teller, you didn’t have to.”

“Don’t thank me so much; it is U.N.C.L.E.’s money after all.”

“All the same to me,”  he says, turning to Illya. “What have you been up to? Buying me some wine as well?”

“He’s just been moping around the apartment as usual.” Gaby dismisses with a wave of her hand.

Illya shrugs, his ears a little red. “I play some chess, read some books.”

Napoleon grins and shakes his head. “Same old Illya. How’s the ankle holding up?”

“The ankle?” This entire fiasco made Illya forget about his ankle and its so-called ‘injury’. He missed his physical therapy appointment yesterday. Damn. “Oh, the ankle. Is fine now. Was fine before.”

They run out of things to talk about after a few hours and the rumblings of Illya’s stomach are a sign it’s time to have lunch. When they come back to the room Napoleon is resting, so they pick up some magazines from the outside waiting room to pass the time. They stay there until the sun drips down the window and neither of them has had dinner. Napoleon tells them they better get home and get some rest.

“Do you want me to stay overnight with you?” Gaby is chewing nervously on her bottom lip, looking Napoleon up and down.

Napoleon shakes his head “I’m fine, Gaby, but thank you. I’m just a little tired. I’ll see you guys in the morning, alright?” He gives her a soft smile when he catches the worried look in her eyes.

She nods and gives Napoleon a kiss. “Get feeling better, alright?”

“Is that a command, Miss Teller?” He raises an eyebrow at her.

That gets her to smile. “Absolutely it is.”

“Then I’ll do my very best to oblige.” Gently, he takes a hold of her hand “Get some rest, okay?.” She nods and he turns his gaze towards Illya “And you too, Peril, you look like shit.”

Illya rolls his eyes. “Alright, Cowboy.”

“Goodnight, you guys. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good night Napoleon.”

Illya opens the door for Gaby. Her heels click on the floor, the echoes fading as she makes her way down the hall. He lingers in the doorway, a hesitant hand on the cool doorknob.

“Napoleon?”

Napoleon looks up at him, eyes wide, already starting to glass over from the medication. The hospital gown hangs a little off his shoulder.

Illya bites the inside of his lip and focuses on the tile beneath him. It’s white with grey flecks.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

Napoleon wrinkles his eyebrows together and gives him a strange look.

“For what?”

 

* * *

The next several days pass by in a slow haze of whitewashed walls, hospital food, green chairs, and Napoleon’s complaints on how he rather be anywhere, god help him anywhere, but this goddamn hospital bed.

“I’m going crazy here, Waverly I swear to god.”

“We need to make sure you’ve made a full recovery before we can send you home,” Waverly replies, repeating this for about the third time.

“Didn’t you hear the doctor? My skull is healing quite nicely _and,”_ he emphasizes, “with no blood clots. The ribs are more or less okay. The only thing I have is this damn arm and I’m right-handed anyway.”

Waverly pulls the glasses from his pocket, pushing them onto his nose with his forefinger  “Solo, you know there are regulations.”

“Waverly, I’m begging you here goddamnit. I’ve been staring at white walls for over twelve days now. I’ve read this book twice and every magazine out there at least once. This bed is uncomfortable, my arm hurts like a bitch, and I haven’t had a half decent meal in over two weeks. Please just send me home I swear I’ll do whatever assignment to make up for it. Hell, I’ll do some extra paperwork for you if I can do it from my own bed.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that. Who knows what could happen if something went wrong and there were no doctors around. We almost lost you once, Mr. Solo, and I will not let that happen again.”

“You’re the one who sent me on that piece of shit mission anyway!” Napoleon shouts.

A still silence washes over the room. Waverly gives him a steely look, crossing his arms.

Napoleon runs his good hand down his face and sighs “I’m sorry, that was unfair.”

“Look,” he says, “I’ve lived on my own for a while now, I know how to take care of myself. And I promise if anything at all feels wrong I’ll call the hospital myself.”

“It’s a little hard to call when you’re unconscious. Maybe if there was someone looking after you, a doctor or a nurse.”

“I can do it.” Illya clears his throat as he peers up from the pages of his paperback.

Waverly blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“I can watch over him, take care of him.”

He thinks about this a moment; Illya can tell by the way he purses his lips, his left foot tapping. “Well,” he says, “I suppose maybe I could speak to the doctor about coming to some sort of arrangement.”

Napoleon beams at him. Illya flushes and averts his gaze.

 

* * *

Getting Napoleon home is a hassle. They have to haul him on a stretcher because he’s not supposed to get out of bed for a few more days until the ribs have healed, and it doesn’t help that Napoleon’s apartment is up on the third floor. The elevator was just barely big enough to squeeze the stretcher in. Then, of course, they had to get him off of the stretcher and into the bed which involved a lot of cursing on Napoleon’s part and shouting at the doctors and nurses not to touch him so much.

By the time they leave Napoleon is in a sour mood. “Give me an aspirin, will you Peril? I need to rest. Jesus, all I fucking do anymore is rest.”

Illya doesn’t say anything but leaves the room to fetch him his aspirin. He gets him a glass of cold water on the way.

“Thanks,” he says, taking the pills from Illya’s hand. He swallows them back with three gulps from the glass and hands it to Illya.

By the time Illya has finished washing the glass Napoleon is fast asleep.

He wakes up sometime around five in the evening and calls out for Illya, who was reading in the living room.

“Hey Peril,” he shouts, “Do I have anything left in the fridge that’s edible?”

Illya frowns. Napoleon’s been gone for several weeks now. He checks the fridge and finds practically everything expired except a can of tomato sauce that’s probably still good. Probably. He looks into the pantry and has more luck; there’s some spaghetti noodles in there and a can of preserved peaches he smuggled in from Georgia. They look okay to Illya but he tries one just to be safe. As far as he can tell it’s fine.

“Not much,” he says after an extensive search, leaning in the bedroom doorway, “but there is spaghetti and sauce if you like. Also canned peaches.”

“Sounds like heaven,” Napoleon replies.

Illya throws a pot of water on the stove and puts a few slices of peaches into a bowl. He sprinkles some sugar from the pantry over them. The spaghetti sauce is cold but he hopes the noodles will warm it up once he puts it on a plate. He gathers everything together: the pasta, the peaches, and a glass of water, and balances them the best he can in his arms before he puts them down on Napoleon’s nightstand, crammed in between the phone and the lamp.

His eyes light up when he sees the steaming plate “God, I’ve missed real food,” he says. He wolfs it down faster than Illya has seen Napoleon eat before. Usually it’s Illya that finishes his food first.

He only comes up from his food to drink water, Illya handing the glass back and forth to him because he’s on the left side of the bed and he almost tips his spaghetti plate onto the floor when he tries to lean across and grab it with his good hand. It’s only after he drains the last of the water when he realizes Illya’s lap is empty.

“What are you eating?”

Illya shrugs. “I’m fine; I am not hungry,” he says.

Napoleon’s eyes narrow. “You’re always hungry.” He looks around him, at the pasta and the peaches and then grabs the bowl from where it lies balanced in between his stomach and the spaghetti plate, passing it to him with an outstretched hand. The spaghetti plate looms ominously, dripping a little sauce onto the bed sheets. “Here, have some peaches.”

“Cowboy–”

“Eat them,” Napoleon says.

Illya sighs and takes the bowl. They are tasty peaches, he has to admit. They’re sweet and juicy and he keeps having to wipe the juice from his jaw. He puts the bowl back on the nightstand when he’s done with it.

“You can sleep in the guest bed tonight, I forgot to tell you. It’s just two doors down the hall. It doesn’t have a bathroom but you can use the one on the left.”

Illya nods. “Thank you.”

“Thank _you_ ,” Napoleon replies, “I’m not sure how much longer I could’ve lasted on those damn cotton sheets. Probably not even cotton, definitely polyester. Whatever they were they were dreadful.”

Illya rolls his eyes, gathering up the plates. “Goodnight, Napoleon.”

 

* * *

The second day goes much smoother than the first. Napoleon eats the rest of the peaches for breakfast and Illya steps out to go pick up some groceries and bring over his clothes; he forgot to pack anything for his stay at Napoleon’s.

He picks up his clothes first, along with his toothbrush and comb, and throws the suitcase into the front seat of the car he borrowed from Gaby. He then heads to the markets downtown and picks up some groceries and a box of pastries he knows will cheer Napoleon up. (Though he has to admit he wanted that cherry pastry the second he saw it in the bakery window). He loads it all into the car and hauls it in one load up three flights of stairs. He‘s putting everything away in the fridge when Napoleon asks him from the bedroom if he brought him anything for lunch.

“Are those from The Carolina?” he asks when Illya presents him with the box of pastries, even though the name is printed right there on the side, cursive letters written out in dark navy blue.

Illya nods and Napoleon breaks out into a grin. “Don’t tell Gaby but right now you are my favorite partner. Or you will be if you bought any of those cherry pastries; they’re absolutely amazing. I’m still trying to figure out their recipe.”

Illya’s heart sinks a little. He’d only bought one of the cherry pastries, the rest were blueberry, strawberry, and chocolate types. Begrudgingly, he opens the box and hands the cherry one to Napoleon.

It’s a beautiful pastry with crisp golden edges and dark red filling over cream cheese, thin white lines of frosting latticed across the top. He watches Napoleon take a bite from the chair next to the bed, eating one of the chocolate (and not cherry) pastries from the box.

“Mmm,” Napoleon says through a mouthful of pastry, “god that’s good.” Illya watches enviously as he wipes away crumbs from his mouth.

He turns over to Illya suddenly, his eyes searching his face. Finally he asks “Do you want some?”

Illya shrugs, even though inside the answer is a loud, resounding _yes._

Napoleon laughs, rolling his eyes. “You big dunce.” He breaks the pastry in half and gives a half to Illya.

“For me?” Illya asks.

“Who else would it be for?”

Illya sinks his teeth into the pastry and it’s just as good as he imagined. Butter, cream cheese, and cherry mix in his mouth and he savors every single bite of it. It’s not long before he’s left with one final chunk, and he looks at it remorsefully before he shoves it into his mouth, making a mental note to buy more of them at the next available opportunity. Then his hands reach for the not as good but still partially eaten chocolate pastry.

“Do you want another?” Illya asks Napoleon, gesturing to the box, “I also have some milk in the fridge.”

“No milk, please,” he responds, “but pass me one of those blueberry ones.”

 

* * *

Gaby brings dinner that night: a pot full of minestrone with penne noodles thrown in. She got it from one of Napoleon’s favorite restaurants after the owner, a friendly man named Paolo, found out he’d been ‘under the weather’ as Gaby had put it.

“Thank god for Paolo,” Napoleon says, ladling soup into his bowl, “I’ll have to send the man something nice for all of this.”

“I brought the wine, too,” Gaby puts the bottle on the table they dragged in from the kitchen. “Straight from France,” she adds proudly as Napoleon picks it up, turning it around in his hand.

“Well done Miss Teller,” he says and Gaby beams at the approval. “Illya, get some glasses from the kitchen and we’ll have a proper dinner.”

Illya comes back with three glasses, sparkling and clear, the best of Napoleon’s dining ware; it seemed appropriate for the occasion. Illya is the one chosen to do the honors of opening the bottle, and he pours the three glasses full of purple-red liquid.

“Well,” Napoleon says as Illya tops off the final glass, “what should we toast to?”

“How about ‘a speedy recovery’?” Gaby suggests, looking back and forth between Napoleon and Illya.

Illya shrugs.

“A speedy recovery it is,” Napoleon says, “I will most definitely drink to that.”

Gaby raises her glass, “To a speedy recovery!” she shouts and Illya winces; it would not be the first time she’s gotten complaints from Napoleon’s landlord.

Napoleon only grins, “To a speedy recovery!” he echoes.

Illya follows suit with his own toast and they clink glasses and take a drink. The wine is sweet on Illya’s tongue, almost a little too much so. He’s never been a wine drinker; he’s always preferred the heavier drinks like whiskey and vodka.

“Marvelous choice, Miss Teller,” Napoleon says, wiping wine from his mouth. Illya notices that it stains his lips a burgundy red. “It’s wonderful, except I think you’ve ruined me for any wine you can find in New York.” He’s already reaching for the bottle to pour himself a second glass. “I wonder if Waverly will let me recover in Paris,” he muses.

Gaby smirks with a mouthful of soup. She swallows and says, “I wouldn’t bank on it; you’re lucky he’s letting you back here.”

Napoleon sighs. “Worth the try.”

 

* * *

That night Illya dreams of Paris, though he remembers little of the city. His mind fills in the holes of memory with borrowed ones from Napoleon and Gaby: lights shimmering over the Seine, the smell of the city after rain, the way the sun warms your back on a cold winter's day. In his dreams it is always winter. He is never cold. In this dream he has on a big coat with fluffy mittens and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He feels soft and warm. He walks through the streets and the morning fog, his breath puffing out in little clouds, his boots crunching the snow beneath. Somewhere in the distance a clock chimes. The river appears at his side, mist glimmering over it like a glaze. Street lamps shine dull and hazy, weak in the morning light; it’s not quite time for them to turn off.

There are very few people milling around in the early hours. He sees a woman setting up a cart with fruits and vegetables. The smell of fresh bread and cream billow out the window of a bakery and his feet lead him towards the smell. When he walks into the building he is overwhelmed by warmth; he feels it circling around him, almost enough to be uncomfortable, and he tugs at his scarf.

Set before him on a tray are pastries, fresh out of the oven, the glaze gleaming over them. He looks at the ones topped with strawberries, powdered sugar, drizzled chocolate, and whipped cream in soft peaks. But the ones that catch his eyes are in the center, with the cherry filling and white lattice frosting.

He takes two from the baker, which seems to make sense in his dream even though he is alone. The wind slaps him when he walks outside, the cold shocking, biting against his cheeks. He simply tightens his scarf and then he walks down the steps no more cold than he was in the bakers. He can almost feel the heat pulsing from the pastry bag in his hand.

He feels like he’s wandered for a long time before he reaches a door of a little brick house he recognizes even though he’s never seen it before in his life. He turns the knob without thinking and steps inside. He can hear the fire crackling and when he stomps the snow off his boots in the doorway the flecks of snow melt right before his eyes. The kitchen smells like beef and something like home and for a moment he almost expects his mother to be waiting for him in the kitchen.

He shucks off his mittens, stuffing them into his coat pocket and wraps his scarf around the hook on the wall before he’s peeling off the coat itself and hanging it over the scarf. He has a sweater on, and he takes off his boots and walks around in black socks, still a little damp from the snow.

“You’re home,” Napoleon says with a beaming grin. Illya found him in the kitchen, humming along to some faint music on the record player. Edith Piaf, he thinks.

“I was just making dinner. It’s beef stroganoff,” he says with a wink. Beef stroganoff. Illya’s favorite food. “Set the table will you?”

Illya nods. “I bought pastries,” he says, holding out the brown bag. It’s still warm even after his long trek in the snow. Napoleon takes it from him, his grin growing wider as he peers into the bag.

“You’re a doll,” he says, leaning up to kiss Illya on the cheek. Illya _humpfs_ and gets the plates down from the shelf, putting them down on the table with forks and two wine glasses, sparkling in the firelight.

Illya doesn’t know what happens because then they are eating strawberry blintzes at the table and Napoleon is laughing at him.

“You have whipped cream on your nose,” he says, picking up a napkin. “Here, let me get it.” He reaches across the table, laughter sparkling in his eyes, and wipes the white flecks off of Illya’s nose. He smiles at him, soft and gentle, and then he’s leaning in further until his lips touch his and he's kissing Illya across the table that seems to have gotten smaller.

Illya wakes up feeling warm and light. He casts an eye to the clock on the night table. It’s only four in the morning. He smiles and goes back to sleep. He doesn’t dream again; he doesn’t feel anything at all. He sleeps like the bed is made of feathers and when he wakes in the morning he remembers little of the dream except for the warmth of home and the taste of strawberry on his tongue and some sort of happiness he doesn’t know how to put a name to.

 

* * *

Napoleon gets bored very quickly, not that that’s a surprise to Illya. After dinner he wrangles Illya into playing chess with him, but it’s obvious he has very little idea of how to play the game.

“I haven’t played since I was a boy,” he confesses when Illya points out that he’s put the king in the bishops place.

Illya, in a good mood since he woke up, takes it upon him to teach him. He shows him the players: the knights, the rooks, kings, bishops, and queens, and the moves of the game. He loses badly the first several rounds as he forgets where pieces go and where to move.

“Watch my board,” Illya instructs him after Napoleon loses the fifth straight game, “You put too much attention into trying to take my pieces. It is no good for the game.”

Napoleon raises an eyebrow, cigarette dangling in his mouth “Are you trying to make me lose? Because from what you told me taking your pieces is the objective of the game.”

Illya rolls his eyes and despite himself he feels a smile tugging up at the corners of his mouth. “Nyet. Is not objective. Chess, it is a strategy. You must focus on what I do as well as what you do. If you know strategy, you can anticipate moves. Stop them. Use them to your advantage.”

“Seems awfully complicated for one game. Besides, I’m no good for strategy anyway.”

Illya blinks. “I have seen you on missions, Cowboy. You are at your best when you use strategy.”

“Thanks,” Napoleon snorts, “that’s comforting.”

“When you meet a mark and you need something what do you do? You watch them. You find out what they’re like, what they will do or say; you know how to trick them into giving you what you want. That is strategy. And you are good at it. Chess is a lot like this.”

“I think chess and seduction are two very different arts,” Napoleon says.

“All strategy is similar,” Illya dismisses, plucking the cigarette from Napoleon’s mouth and putting it out in the ashtray, “now pay attention.”

He then runs them through the last game, through each one of Napoleon's poor moves; showing him the ones he should’ve played instead.

“If you watch my board, this does not happen. You can see I have moved my knight in place to take your queen and then you move your queen so it does not happen.”

“What if you have two different pieces that you could take? How do you save them?”

Illya shrugs. “Pick one.”

“Okay, but which?”

“Whatever is right for the game. Strategy.”

Napoleon groans, thunking his head against the headboard “God, I’m sick of chess. It’s giving me a headache. Now how about a few hands of good old fashioned gin rummy? I bet I could take you for a ride with that.”

“Okay,” Illya agrees, “tell me where to get cards and teach me how to play.”

“They’re on the bookshelf in the left drawer.”

 

* * *

“There is no way to win this game,” Illya groans, throwing his cards down on the table.

“It’s all luck, that’s the thing.”

“I do not have luck.”

Napoleon laughs, scooping up all the cards together, handing them back to Illya to shuffle. “No, no you don’t. That’s what makes this fun.”

“For you,” Illya says but he knows he’s lying. He’s played this game for almost two hours now, and he’s lost almost every round. It’s pitiful, really, the way he loses but he loves the way Napoleon smiles when he wins. Besides, he’s had a few scattered victories to keep him going. There’s a word for it, Illya knows; gambler’s fallacy, or something like that.

“Aw, come on Peril, don’t be a poor sport.”

“I have lost almost a hundred dollars, Cowboy.”

“We could bet with cigarettes,” Napoleon suggests, “it’s what we used to do in the army. That’s where I learned the game, actually, though we played it a little differently. We had time to kill and servicemen are always bored. I’m pretty sure this game is the only thing that kept me sane during the war but I lost almost half of what I owned.”

Napoleon laughs and shakes his head. “Fucking Bradshaw. We had this one guy, Bradshaw, who would clean us out almost every time. We thought for sure he was cheating, even stole his cards once just to prove he was. Turns out the guy was just lucky.”

Illya clears his throat, toying with the cards in his hands, and says, “When I was with KGB there was one agent, Yeleshev, and we worked together many times. He was very smart, very young. In school he played chess very well. He could have gone to championships but his father was taken to Siberia when he was fourteen. He was recruited by KGB three years later as a strategist.” Napoleon has gone silent, leaning over on the bed to listen; it’s not often Illya likes to speak about his past.

“I knew chess,” he continues, “my mother taught me when I was little. I did not have many friends and she would play with me so I would not be alone. After my father was taken I always played alone.” He remembers those days so well even now; the both of them wrapped up blankets, dragging the kitchen table nearer to the fireplace and playing round after round until the sun would dip down behind the windows. He remembers her voice, soft and encouraging, and her warm smiles after he’d declare ‘checkmate’.

“When I met Yeleshev we were in a safehouse outside Stalingrad. We had a lot of time and very little to do. So we play chess.”

“Did you win?” Napoleon asks and Illya laughs.

“No, I lose. Many times. But I learned from him, to play better.”

“Where is he?” Napoleon jokes, his eyes glittering with amusement. “Maybe he can give me some pointers.”

“Dead. Shot in the head at a cafe in Budapest. He was twenty-four.”

A cold silence fills the room. Illya looks down at the scratches on the table. He’d never told anyone about Yeleshev before. It hurts just the same now as it did seven years ago.

“I’m sorry, Illya.”

“It was a long time ago,” he whispers. He can’t seem to take his eyes off the table. He’s thinking about one of the last times he saw him, after a mission sometime, washing plates together in the Baltic, his bloodstained shirt drifting away in the tide. He’d yelled as it bobbed up and down in the water and Yeleshev laughed, told him it served him right for taking his eye off of it.

Illya takes a look at the clock. It’s a little past eleven.

“It is getting late,” he says at the same time Napoleon says “have a drink.”

He looks at Napoleon, who gives him a pleading look; he must be trying to steal moves from Gaby.

“One drink, come on. I’ll even play another round of chess. If I win you get all the money back.”

“And if you lose?”

“I’ll buy you a cherry pastry.” Illya raises his eyebrow, casting a look at Napoleon’s bedridden state. “Or you can buy yourself one.”

“With my money?”

“With _my_ money. It’s mine now, I won it fair and square. And I’ll let you buy a pastry with it if you win.”

Illya leans back in his chair, thinking about the proposition. “So if you win I get my money back and if I win I get a pastry? I win both ways.”

“I guess you do.”

Illya’s eyes narrow. “Are you doing this just so I’ll stay up with you?”

“What would be the harm in that?” Napoleon’s eyes shine with mischief and Illya simply shakes his head; he can never seem to say no to him.

“You are ridiculous, Cowboy.”

“Come on; let’s play.”

“You are very lucky I love cherry pastries,” Illya says, setting up the board.

He takes Napoleon’s king in under three minutes, an embarrassingly easy victory.

“Two out of three?” Napoleon asks.

“Pushing it.”

“We’ll see.” With his good arm Napoleon reaches over to take his pieces back from Illya’s collection pile. Illya watches as he sets them back up, one by one.

Illya sighs, grabbing his own few (two, actually) pieces Napoleon managed to take and starts to collect the rest from the board. “You are ridiculous”

“You said that already.”

“Because it is true.”

 

* * *

Illya, unsurprisingly, wins all three rounds. Which is why he leaves early in the morning, with the money left on Napoleon’s dresser from the night before, to Carolina’s bakery. When he gets there the air is warm, almost too warm for a July morning. He finds them sitting on a little glass dish by dozens of other pastries and loaves of bread, fresh and warm and just out of the oven. He walks home slowly, knowing there is still a little less than an hour left before Napoleon should be awake.

He strolls back home the long way, admiring the people walking by, he’s always liked early mornings. There’s something comforting about them, a sort of solitude that exists in these hours that’s impossible to find at any other time of day. He likes the way the light seems hazy and far away as the sun makes its way into the sky. He lets it warm his back as he makes his way down side streets and alleyways, meandering, really, until it starts to get too warm and he’s sweating by the time he gets to Napoleon’s apartment. He decides to take a shower and leaves the pastries on the counter. By the time he gets out Napoleon is already awake and calling for him.

“Illya, is that you? Please say you brought breakfast, I’m so hungry.”

He places four pastries on a plate, fills up two glasses of milk, and puts it all on a tray he finds in the top cupboard over the fridge.

He savors the curious look on Napoleon’s face when he sets it down on the makeshift table by the bed.

“Are those Carolina cherry pastries?”

Illya nods.

“Illya, you are an angel.”

“Do not thank me so much, I paid with your money.” He drags the chair over from the side of the bed where he left it after their chess games the night before, sitting down as he hands Napoleon a pastry.

“Cherry pastries are cherry pastries; I’ll take it.”

Napoleon shoves the pastry into his mouth, his teeth sinking into the soft dough. He lets out a moan that makes Illya turn almost as red as the cherry filling.

“God, what do they put into these pastries; they’re amazing. Thanks for getting them, with my money or not,” Napoleon’s smile shines on him with such genuine warmth it makes Illya shift in his seat.

“No problem, Cowboy.”

 

* * *

“Do you have anything good to read?” Napoleon asks one night, lying propped up in bed. A magazine lies at his feet with the pages splayed open. It’s _Time_ , he thinks, Napoleon always did like that magazine.

“I bought you some books, while you were gone.”

“Oh? What books?”

“There was a sale on Louis L'amour westerns, so I bought a few, for my Cowboy.” He clears his throat, a flush creeping into his cheeks, “and a few American ones. I can go by my place and bring them over tomorrow.”

“That reminds me, I meant to tell you I finished your book. The one you left at the hospital? I read it twice, actually.”

“Oh?” Illya leans against the doorway, the wood digging into his back.

“Yeah. I thought it was really good. Thank you, too, without it I’m sure I would’ve lost my mind in that hospital. _Anna Karenina,_ though, not the book I expected from you. Bit romantic, don’t you think? I thought you’d go for something more depressing like the _Brothers Karamazov_ or, god forbid, _Crime and Punishment_.”

Napoleon is teasing him; he knows Dostoevsky holds a prized place on his bookshelf.

“Those are good books, but _Anna Karenina_ , it is special,” Illya says, “My mother loved it. She said it was a book for dreamers.”

“Why do you love it?”

It’s an odd question and Illya has a hard time forming an answer. For one it’s a question he has never been asked and for another he’s not sure how to put his feelings into words; the density of the love he feels for it and its characters, all of their plights and sufferings.

“Many things,” he says eventually, “The idea of forgiveness and family. The characters, how easy it is to understand them and relate to them. Maybe sometimes I am too much like Levin, maybe too much like Karenin.” He felt that way the first time he read the novel as a young man; alone, disconnected, searching for meaning and happiness and unable to find them no matter how hard he tried. Some days he’s afraid of being a Karenin, ready to lash out at the world, too weak to do the right thing.

During his time the KGB, there was a quote he kept in mind, repeating it like a mantra. _Vengeance is mine; I will repay._ There was such a potent anger in that line, driving into his anger at his father, for being so foolish, his mother, for falling apart, and himself, for letting himself become something so cruel so quickly. The idea was that his work and the relentless way he threw himself into it was a vengeance on it all; his past, present, and future. Stepping back now Illya realizes that maybe all he was doing was searching for a reason to destroy himself.

“Perhaps it’s a good thing to be like Levin; after all, he’s one of the few that got a happy ending,” Napoleon says.

Illya shrugs, hands in the pockets of his jacket. “Perhaps.”

“Would you rather be like Anna and get your head crushed by a train?”

“No,” Illya huffs out a rough laugh, “I suppose not.”

There’s a scene in _Anna Karenina_ where Vronsky arrives at the train station to pick up his mother. By chance he happens to catch sight of Anna and finds himself unable to look away. There’s something in those deep eyes, grey and shining with a sort of spiritual brilliance, that he cannot forget. It’s that feeling that haunts him when he spots her at the dance, when he follows her all the way to Moscow. Illya used to find this ridiculous, losing one's senses simply at the sight of a pair of bright, shining eyes but he’s grown up a lot from the time he was twenty-one. There’s one memory in particular, of blue eyes looking into his from the back of a car, something indescribable happening inside as they briefly connect. That same feeling haunted him in Rome, Istanbul, and even now with Napoleon smiling up to him from the side of the bed. He’s wondered more than once if, like Vronsky, they will prove to be his downfall. But all these thoughts seem too heavy for a Thursday afternoon so he simply pulls out a copy of _Three Men In A Boat_ , one of Napoleon’s favorite novels, from the bookshelf in the main room and drops it into Napoleon’s lap.

“Much lighter than Tolstoy,” he says.

Napoleon picks it up. “Just about anything would be.”

 

* * *

“Fuck!”

Illya wakes up with a jolt, the shouting from Napoleon’s bedroom jostling him out of sleep. It’s still the middle of the night and at first he thought he was having a nightmare; it wouldn’t be the first one he’s had of his partners injured and crying out for help.

He rushes into Napoleon’s room, flinging his robe over his pajamas, as he makes his way down the hall. When he finds him he’s upright in bed, back propped against the pillow and his good hand clutching his side.

“What is wrong, Cowboy?”

“It’s the fucking ribs.” Napoleon has pain written across his face and sweat dripping from his forehead. His knuckles are white as he clutches his ribcage. “God I don’t know what I did but they hurt.”

“Do you want me to call Doctor Ramirez?” Illya asks, trying to remember where he left the paper with the number on it. By the liquor cabinet, he thinks, he swore he left it there. He better check.

“No, no I’ll be fine.”

Illya stops. “You are sure?” He doesn’t look fine at all. Napoleon is always doing this, trying to breeze through his injuries untouched, write off all aches and pains as momentary discomfort.

“Just get me some of those painkillers, they’re in the top drawer. They should do the trick.” Illya still isn’t convinced so Napoleon tacks on “If not, you can call the doctor.”

Illya looks at him again, at the grimace on his face. He really wants to call the doctor, though it’s Napoleon’s call and he wants to respect that, but Napoleon can be stupidly stubborn when he wants to be and god knows if he doesn’t want to call the doctor he won’t, no matter how bad the pain gets. He makes a deal with himself: if the ribs aren’t better in an hour he’ll call the doctor no matter what Napoleon says.

“Okay.”

On his way to grab a glass of water for the pills he looks at the little desk by the liquor cabinet, a phone sitting on top, and pulls out a narrow drawer. Inside he finds a pen and the phone number for the doctor. He slips the piece of paper into his robe pocket.  

The kitchen table by the bedside is blocking the drawer of the nightstand and Illya has to move it aside so he can get into the drawers for the bottle. He uncaps it and hands Napoleon two red pills. Napoleon’s hand claws at his as he reaches for them and he throws them back in his throat, swallowing them with one quick gulp of water.

Illya takes the chair from the far end of Napoleon’s room and moves it to the side of the bed, taking a seat next to Napoleon, watching the rise and fall of his chest.

“I’ll be fine, Illya, really. You can go back to bed now.”

“No, I will wait here until the medicine starts to work.”

Napoleon stares at him and lets out a sigh of exasperation. “Well for god's sake you can’t just stare at me the whole time.”

Illya comes back into the room with a book tucked under his arm. He sits into the chair, the rough wooden back digging into his spine. The novel is a simple poetry book, he’s in no mood for anything too complicated this late at night. It’s Neruda; a personal favorite of Napoleon’s. When he first introduced Illya to the writer he had joked he was going to learn Spanish just so he could read the original. It’s easy to see why he likes them; their soft, sensual words combine the erotic with the spiritual in delicate verses with imagery of starry skies and soft skin. He falls into their charm, Neruda’s alluring voice filling his mind with thoughts of tenderness and the warmth of a summer night. _Drunk with pines and long kisses, like summer I steer fast the sail of the roses._ He runs his thumb over the line, as if touching it will engrave the words into his skin.

“Illya?” Illya jerks his head up from the lines, Napoleon watching him from the edge of the bed.

“The first night in the hospital, you told me you were sorry before you left. You never said what you were sorry for.”

Illya puts the book down and sighs. He sets it in his lap, watching his fingers trace the words on the cover of the novel.

“It was my fault,” he says, his fingers looping around the curved _‘O’_ in the title. “Everything. You did not trust Carlson and I should not have let you go. It is my fault this happened to you.”

A quiet moment. He’s waiting for Napoleon to tell him he’s right, to leave, to go fuck himself and his chess and Russian novels but:

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

His head snaps up, eyes blinking wide like a deer in headlights.

“If I really didn’t think the mission was a good idea, I would’ve said so myself.”

“Cowboy–”

“It’s bound to happen to any of us; it’s part of the job, you know. We’re all more or less expendable.”

Illya’s grip tightens on the paperback. “Do not say that.”

“Oh, come on Illya, you should know this better than anyone. Remember your friend old friend Yeleshev? That’s what happens when–”

The paperback clatters to the ground as Illya rises to his feet. “Do not talk to me about Yeleshev.”

“Illya, I’m just saying–”

But Illya has already left the room. Let him deal with his own ribs. It shouldn’t matter to Illya, anyway; he’s just a partner, after all. Expendable. That’s what the KGB used to call him.

He starts pouring himself a glass of Napoleon’s expensive whiskey (Illya abhors his taste in vodka) before he just decides to take the whole bottle to the bedroom. He plays half a round of chess but he’s grown sick of the game. He shoves it to the side, not bothering to pick up the pieces lying in the ridges of the bedsheets, and goes to sleep instead. He swallows a sleeping pill with the whiskey, the taste of it harsh on his tongue as he drifts into sleep.

 

* * *

Illya wants to cook Napoleon a meal. God knows he deserves one; aside from the first night’s minestrone, Napoleon’s food has been pathetic. He can’t get up from bed to cook himself and Illya isn’t much of a cook so their dinners these last few days have been Chinese takeout, identical Swanson’s chicken and vegetable TV dinners, Campbell’s chicken soup, and omelets that looked more like scrambled eggs with store bought rolls. The poor man has had to stomach so many sandwiches for lunch; tomato and bacon, ham and cheese, tuna on rye, and any other possible combination. He’s undoubtedly sick of them from the disappointed faces he makes when he thinks Illya isn’t looking.

The trouble is Napoleon is always the one to cook. Gaby and Illya have come to rely on him for that; they’re both used to scraping by a meal whenever they can so long as it doesn’t require too much effort on their part (for Illya this means TV dinners and canned soup, for Gaby it means fast food or fancy restaurants so long as she’s not putting in any work herself). He’s made it very clear he’s the chef of the group and neither one of that had tried to challenge that.

Except now Illya wants to. He’s had a rough week with the ribs, bad cooking, and being bedridden. He’s actually kept his complaining to a minimum but Illya knows that everything hurts and he’s sick and tired of being in pain and in bed the whole day. It’s a feeling he can, unfortunately, relate to. He first wants to raid Napoleon’s cookbooks when he is met by a complete surprise: he doesn’t own a single one. The closest thing he has is a small binder of laminated cards— some written in English, many of them not— each one he assumes to be a different recipe he’s been given over the years. But there can’t be more than twenty cards in the whole binder. The only way Illya can understand it is by realizing that Napoleon keeps most of the recipes in his mind. He thinks about that for a while, sitting on the kitchen tile with binder in hand, and marvels how that man never fails to amaze him. The elaborate chocolate birthday cake he’d made for Gaby a few months ago? Made entirely by memory. It makes his head spin just by thinking about it.

The only recipe Illya can think of making is the penne alla vodka but he has his doubts. He’s made it twice, but only the second attempt could be deemed successful. The last thing he wants to do is set Napoleon’s kitchen on fire. In the end when he weighs the pros and cons he realizes that the worst thing that could happen if he made it is failing and having to eat a nearly expired can of tomato soup, which also happens to be the best case scenario of _not_ making the pasta. It’s a pretty easy choice after that.

Despite the near-panic sensation he feels while making it, frantically trying to make sure everything is okay, it actually turns out alright. He samples it before he scoops it up, the can of Campbells and the can opener on the counter just in case, but it tastes alright to Illya. He just hopes Napoleon feels the same.

“You made this?” He asks, surprise in his eyes when Illya puts the two plates down on the table in the bedroom. He’s also brought out a bottle of wine, cheap from the liquor store and not a French vintage; he thought it might pair well with the pasta. Or maybe it’s supposed to be white wine, he can never remember.

“You gave me the recipe.”

“I did, didn’t I.” He’s smiling at Illya with that look he gets sometimes, the one that makes Illya shift in his shoes, wishing he could know what he’s thinking.

Illya watches with anticipation as he skewers some noodles onto his fork. He lifts it up, puts it into his mouth; Illya watches his throat bob up and down as he swallows.

“It’s quite good,” he says, fork already searching out another bite.

“Thank you.”

Napoleon aims the fork at him. “I may have to watch out; you might end up becoming the official cook around here.”

The corners of Illya’s lips tug upwards. “Nyet, no, I like it when you cook for me.”

“Yeah?”

“Da,” he says, and with a softness he didn’t mean to let slip, “Your food is very good, I do not often eat good food.”

“Well, I like cooking for you.”

Napoleon’s bright eyes catch Illya’s, smiling and full of affection, and once again he thinks of Anna Karenina. He flushes and turns to his own pasta, pushing the noodles around on the plate.

 

* * *

When he comes home he finds Napoleon sitting on the couch, the television in front of him blaring one of those stupid American sketch comedy shows. Wrapped around him is a soft grey blanket that is too large for him, the ends pooling over his feet, gathering together in a heap on the floor. On the coffee table in front of him there’s a half-eaten apple and a glass of scotch. It’s only when he catches sight of the white plaster cast does Illya realize what is wrong with this picture.

“Cowboy, what are you doing up? You are not supposed to be out of bed.”

Napoleon doesn’t even bother turning over to him and his eyes remained fixed on the television set. “Relax, I’m fine now.”

“Three days ago you were complaining about your ribs.”

Napoleon shrugs, picking up his apple with his good hand. “Three days is a long time; a lot can happen in three days.”

“Like a miraculous recovery, I suppose?”

“Exactly.” Napoleon bites down on the apple, and Illya doesn’t miss the light wince on his face when he leans over to place it back on the coffee table.

He narrows his eyes as he scrutinizes his movements. “How many pills are you on?”

“Just a couple aspirin.”

Napoleon gives him an exasperated look like he doesn’t know what he’s still doing looming over the couch. “I swear to god, Illya, I’m fine. Don’t fuss so much.” He pats the spot next to him on the couch “Sit down. They’ve got reruns of the Red Skelton show playing.”

Illya takes a seat, eyes on the black and white show playing before him, the picture clearer than he’s ever seen on Napoleon’s new 23-inch tv. It’s a color television too but Illya has yet to see a single show in color on it. He’s never seen color tv in general, used to watching late night reruns until the screen runs fuzzy and the channels remind him they won’t be broadcasting until morning. He’s always wanted to see it, never truly believing in its existence. He hasn’t been to the movies either since he was a little boy but he’s heard they have technicolor there now too. Maybe he’ll have to find the tv guide see what’s on next.

“I never understand these American comedies,” he says as he watches a woman in a fur coat accidentally slam a man's hand into the door. He can’t tell if he’s seen this show before; the programs begin to blend together in a blur of hotel rooms and late nights with vodka and numbed fingers, the same laugh tracks and applause in each episode, the theme songs blending together into some mismatched, string music sound of American television, scratching a little with poor reception. They're loud and stupid, full of cheap sound effects and gags, plotlines barely strung together to make sloppy stories with cheap laughs. He’s always hated the way they speak in American shows, too. Voices pitched so high they dip into falsettos, fast and rapid with slang that goes over Illya’s head.

“You think too much; that’s your problem.”

Illya huffs; maybe he does.

Napoleon leans over and rests his head on Illya’s shoulder. He’s spread the blanket out so it covers both of their legs, the top corner hanging just a little off Illya’s knee. He almost freezes at the touch, the soft black strands of Napoleon’s hair grazing his chin as he tries to find the most comfortable position. He’s waiting for Napoleon to say something, to make a joke like he always does, but he remains glued to the television set. Slowly, Illya shifts his body into the touch, angling his head to fit better next to Napoleon’s. He can almost feel Napoleon’s steady heartbeat and the rise and fall of his breathing.

“Illya?” he says when the show cuts to commercials, a soap add that Illya feels he’s seen at least a hundred times before.

“Mhm?”

Napoleon is looking up to him now, his blue eyes wide, good hand balanced on Illya’s thigh. “About the other night? I just want to say I’m sorry. I was having a bad night, not enough painkillers for the ribs. I didn’t mean all that stuff I said. But Illya? I meant it when I said wasn’t any of your fault, none of it. It wasn’t. I made my decision and Carlson made his. Neither of us could’ve known he would sell me out like that. If you want to blame anyone blame Carlson, but not yourself, okay?”

Napoleon’s gaze is searching, full of something like concern and maybe like regret and Illya doesn’t like it when he looks at him this way so he says “Okay.”

Napoleon relaxes and lays his head back down on Illya’s shoulder and Illya has to fight down the urge to wrap an arm around him. The commercial break ended a minute or so past but it doesn’t matter, the show is all nonsense anyway. The minutes click by on the clock and the show enters its second episode, impossible to tell if its original air date was before or after the last. Not that it matters.

“God this show is stupid,” Napoleon says.

“Yes, yes it is.”

 

* * *

Gaby has been coming over regularly which has greatly increased Napoleon’s mood. He adores her; it’s obvious in his smiles and the gentle way he touches her. She’d just gotten back from another mission, this one to London where she had bought ‘the most beautiful dress in the world,’ she puts it. It's a full-on evening gown of black velvet, the deep cut in the neckline leaves her shoulders bare, the open back exposing her tanned skin. Illya likes the look of her at the table, out of place with her gown and pearls, hair thrown up in an elegant updo. She looks like Natasha from War and Peace.

“Do you ever regret not going out with Gaby?” Napoleon asks him later that night, sitting on the sofa with a glass of scotch in hand.

“What?”

“Weren’t you two almost together? I could’ve sworn you were.”

Illya takes a drink from his own glass and shakes his head and thinks for a minute. “No, no I don’t regret it. It would not have worked.” It’s true; she’s a sweet girl and very beautiful but Illya cannot help but feel as though she is a little sister. He had never had siblings and Gaby feels like what he imagines family to be.

Napoleon, that’s a different story. He cares for him, yes, but in a way that’s different from Gaby and he can’t put his finger down on exactly why. It’s not as if he likes him less; quite the opposite, in fact. He feels sometimes like maybe he likes him too much. He’s made him soft; three years ago Illya could never imagine staying up until four in the morning waiting for someone to drop by and say hello.

It’s over lunch one day when he finally realizes that the difference is love, watching Napoleon smoke in between drinking his coffee, the coffee he takes with too much cream and sugar. He may love Gaby like a sister, but he is in love with Napoleon Solo. He always thought the first time he fell in love would be terrifying, but it’s not; it just seems obvious.

 

* * *

They have a check-up appointment with Dr. Ramirez on the 18th of August to check on his arm, head, and ribs. The ribs have gotten much better. Napoleon hasn’t been complaining quite as much and has even been getting up and walking around the house; though Illya forbids him from going outside on his own and Napoleon complains he’s putting him on house arrest. The head is fine too, not nearly as bad as it could’ve been. The only thing that's been causing Napoleon any trouble is the arm. He’s still taking pain meds for it and has woken up more than once in the middle of the night either in pain or sick of the itching. He hates that cast,  He talked Illya’s ear off the entire drive up about finally getting it off but it turns out it will be at least another two weeks before he’ll see that day.

Despite the head and the ribs being cleared Napoleon leaves in a bad mood, still upset over the cast. It hadn’t gotten better when he was told he needed to do three months of physical therapy for it.

“Waverly better send me on a mission before then. Even something simple, I don’t care; I’m not sitting on my ass for three months waiting for this to heal.”

Illya is hoping too; he doesn’t want to spend so many missions away from Napoleon. The check-up had depressed him as well.

“I need a drink,” Napoleon declares in the passenger seat and Illya concurs, steering them to the nearest bar in New York City.

Illya doesn’t drive drunk; he hates it, knows his mother would never forgive him for it, but he doesn’t want to spend another second in this bar. It’s getting crowded, a little past five o'clock now, loud and rambunctious with the sound of men laughing and toasting. He can never stay in these places too long. His fingers keep tapping on his thighs and he knows he’s got to leave soon. He cannot bear all this noise.

He tugs at Napoleon’s sleeve, and he gives him a slow, questioning look, his face melancholic in the way he’s recognized on drunks before.

“Time to go, Cowboy.”

He’s only had a beer so he thinks driving should be okay. He would rather walk it but the apartment is over seven miles away and Napoleon is too drunk to walk that far; unlike Illya he’s had more than one beer. He’d drowned whiskey after whiskey, his cast slung over the top of the wooden table, almost an eggshell white in the yellow bar lights. His hair has been messier these last few days thanks to said cast but Illya likes it that way. It looks less well made, less untouchable without his pomade slicked throughout it. He likes the way the rebellious front curl always manages to find a way to tumble down his forehead. He slumps down in the passenger seat, head pressed against the window, cheeks flushed the lightest of pink. Illya pauses to get a good look at him as he twists the key in the ignition, his hand nearly reaching out to touch him. In his mind he tries out the words _I love you_ and wonders if it will be easier or harder to say them in real life.

 

* * *

With Napoleon’s head cleared by the doctors and his ribs mostly healed Illya can’t think of a reason to stay. All he’s doing for him now is cooking and he’s not doing a very good job of it. Napoleon would probably be better off going to a restaurant., anything other than Illya’s bad cooking and takeout.

He packs his stuff up one morning, jamming it all into his suitcase. He leaves all the books he’d brought Napoleon and told him he would pick them up once he’s finished with them. He makes easy work of the suitcase; it’s packed within minutes, packing a suitcase has become one of those things his hands know how to do on instinct.

“Call if you need anything,” he tells Napoleon once again as he trudges down the hall, hoping his shoes aren’t tracking any mud on Napoleon’s rug.

“Peril?” Napoleon says as he’s almost out the door “Before you leave, do you want to go get lunch? It’s on me this time.”

Illya shrugs. “Alright. Where are you taking me this time?”

 

* * *

He’s been gone for three days when he gets the call on the phone. He hears ringing from the main room and it jostles him awake. He looks around, bleary-eyed, and the room is still dark with the faintest strips of light coming in from the half-open window; he cannot stand the summer heat in New York. He can make out the outline of the door frame in the distance. The phone rings again and he wonders why he doesn’t just get a phone for the bedroom like Napoleon has. Its ringing becomes an irritant as he throws on his old robe, padding out into the hallway in the oversized slippers he got from Gaby as a Christmas gift. With fumbling hands he reaches into the robe pocket for the pack of cigarettes he’s pretty sure are still in there.

“Illya, I’m bored,” Napoleon complains on the other line.

Illya fishes around for his lighter, cigarette in between his lips. “It is almost two in the morning.”

The light from the lighter casts an eerie shadow on the wall, the flame, overlarge, dancing up and down over the wallpaper. Illya wants to go flip on the lights but the switch is at the far end of the room and he can’t drag the phone cord that far away.

“Exactly, I can’t sleep.”

Illya sighs, puffing out a grey plume of smoke. He sits down in the big chair by the phone, head craned back and sinking into the soft leather. He taps the ashes out onto the wooden floor, already scuffed and stained by the previous occupant.

“Come over,” Napoleon says.

“It is too late for a drink and I am tired.”

“At least just stay on the line?”

“And do what?” Illya takes another drag and watches the smoke billow in the air. It’s mid-August now and the night weather is gentle and cool; perfect weather. Much better than July heat. Soon he won't have to keep his window open at nights.

“I don’t know, tell me a story, read me a book, anything.”

“Cowboy–”

“Please? My arm hurts and I can’t go back to sleep and it’s going to take forever for these painkillers to kick in. You said I could call.” He sounds like a pouting child, like a boy whos’ mother won’t let him stay up late to listen to his favorite show on the radio. It’s oddly endearing.

Illya sighs. “Fine.”

He cast his eyes around the room, trying to think of something to say; an old mission story, a shopping adventure with Gaby, something stupid he once did in the army. Weak moonlight illuminates a little of the room, glowing dimly on the wallpaper and the telephone, stretching out shadows across the hardwood, still and solitary. It reminds him something, the memory coming back from where he buried it years ago.

“When I was a boy,” he starts slowly as the story begins to unfold in his memory, “I had a literature class in school. The teacher was very mean, and she made us memorize poems and recite them.”

“I remember those days; Mr. Richards did the same thing in high school English. God, I hated it.”

“Me too. I was a shy boy and I did not like to read in front of others. I was always embarrassed. But there was one poem I memorized I always loved. I still remember it now. It goes:

> ‘My voice that is for you the languid one, and gentle,  
>  Disturbs the velvet of the dark night's mantle,  
>  By my bedside, a candle, my sad guard,  
>  Burns, and my poems ripple and merge in flood --  
>  And run the streams of love, run, full of you alone,  
>  And in the dark, your eyes shine like the precious stones,  
>  And smile to me, and hear I the voice:  
>  My friend, my sweetest friend... I love... I'm yours... I'm yours’"

“That’s beautiful.”

“It’s Pushkin.” One of his first Pushinks, the poem that got him to see past the dreaded mornings for reciting poetry and Mrs. Vasilyeva’s hardened eyes to find beauty in the words, hooking him for life.

“Of course it is,” Napoleon says. Illya can almost imagine him rolling his eyes.

He taps the cigarette once again, ashes drifting to the floor. “There is another one too, about night, but it is different:

> ‘Night, streets, the lantern, the drugstore,  
>  The meaningless and dusky light.  
>  A quarter of the century more --  
>  All fall the same into your sight!  
>    
>  You died – as it was before –  
>  You have the former way to start:  
>  The streets, the lantern, the drugstore,  
>  Swell of the canal in the night.’”

He first read that poem when he was in the army, in a book he had borrowed from one of the soldiers in his barracks. Something about it always stuck to him, it's haunting, melancholic nature and even now he’s been unable to forget it. For a while he believed it.

“Kind of dreary,” Napoleon says, “I think I like the other one better.”

“Me too. I loved that poem. It was the only reading assignment I got a good mark on.”

“Really? I thought you would’ve been great at school, something like a teacher’s pet.”

“Teacher’s pet? I am not an animal, Cowboy.”

Napoleon laughs on the other line. “It’s a figure of speech, Peril. It means someone who always gets straight As and hangs around the teacher too much.”

“Then no, I was not ‘teachers pet’, as you Americans put it. I was not very bright as a boy. I had a hard time with mathematics and science. I was okay at Russian; I could read very well, but I could not memorize. I would always forget the words when I had to speak.” He would, too. It’s with an almost nostalgic horror he remembers those days in the grey walls of the classroom, rain drizzling down the windowpane, being too acutely aware of everything happening around him, the expectant eyes of his classmates, Mrs. Vasilyeva staring at him with narrowed eyes behind the steel frames of her glasses. He would open his mouth to speak but the words would not come out, his brain wouldn’t let him remember even the smallest fragment of a line. He would sit down red-faced, defeated and ashamed.

“I bet you were better than me,” Napoleon says, “I got myself in a lot of trouble at school. I used to steal all my school supplies from other kids. One time I got caught smoking in the boy’s room.”

He can imagine it, Napoleon with a stolen cigarette in a bathroom stall, crouched down with smoke billowing over the stall doors.

“Who caught you?”

“Mr. Albright, the vice principal. They suspended me for two weeks. My mother was not happy with me, I remember.”

“I cannot imagine she was.”

Light shadows start to stretch across the room, the cigarettes begin to pile up in the ashtray, and Napoleon’s voice is sleepy on the other end of the line. He’s in the middle of telling him a story about his days in the CIA when his words drift off and, suddenly, silence. Illya waits for a moment in the quiet, letting it stretch out as the light shifts across the floor, the barest sliver of sunlight starting to make itself into the sky. Soon it will be dawn. No response on the phone; he’s finally fallen asleep. Illya imagines him lying on his back, arm hanging off the edge of the bed with the phone dangling helplessly on the cord. The image makes him smile.

“Goodnight, Cowboy,” he says softly into the stillness and hangs up the phone with the smallest of _clicks._

As he makes his way back into his bedroom he dreams up other late-night conversations with Napoleon, picturing them laying in bed and Napoleon rolling over to talk to him, moonlight catching in his blue eyes, on his pale limbs, so close he can reach out and touch. When he climbs back into bed he looks at the clock and realizes it’s almost four in the morning. Like a fool he smiles at it and drifts off into sleep, dreaming about snowy, moonlight walks and warm bed sheets.

 

* * *

He comes back to Napoleon’s apartment the next day; he may not need him anymore but he’s good company. His visits daily, under the pretense of ‘checking up on him’, just until the arm is better. They sit around the living room and play chess, gin rummy,  and pinochle (a new game adventure for both of them; they’re both terrible). Sometimes they read books, sometimes Napoleon will help him with his French, he’d been so excited to hear he was learning it.

_L’homme plus merveilleux du monde._ That’s what Napoleon had called him when he told him, something about a man he thinks; he wishes his French was better so he could understand.

“I went down to the record store a couple days ago,” Napoleon says one afternoon, lounging in the sofa, lying on his back with his arms crossed over his chest as he stares up at the ceiling.

“Oh?” Illya puts down his copy of _L’Étranger_ (the English version, of course; he’d be pushing it if he tried reading a child’s book in French).

“Yeah, I’d put in an order for this Edith Piaf record and it just came in. So I swung by and picked it up when I was out to dinner with Gaby. Haven’t listened to it yet, it’s hard to put a record on one-handed.”

Illya takes it as his cue to put the record on, carefully pulling the record out from its sleeve, leaning said sleeve up against the record player.

“You’re a doll,” Napoleon says.

Her voice carries soft and sweet throughout the living room, a gentle melody that sounds light and airy, twinged with the faintest note of melancholy, like a warm winter’s day. It’s dreamy with words soft like a lover’s kiss. An overwhelming sense of deja-vu comes over Illya and he tries to remember where he’s heard the song before. Maybe he’s just always associated her voice with romance. Strange enough, he’s also always associated her with Napoleon.

He watches Napoleon’s foot tap to the rhythm, eyes closed, the music washing over him.

“I’ve always loved this song,” he says, “it reminds me of a time when I was at the opera in Paris.”

Suddenly, and with great effort, he flips himself over on the sofa so he’s lying on his stomach with his cast dangling over the armrest.

“Have I told you that story?” He asks, leaning in close over the armrest, balancing himself on his good arm. His features are delicate in the afternoon light and Illya can make out each of his eyelashes, the hair beginning to grow in on his jaw, the few lines and wrinkles that are starting to show on his face.

Illya shakes his head, smiling; he loves him when he’s like this.

“Well, it was back in the war–”

 

* * *

Illya gets the call the next morning. A mission, at long last, ‘now that the ankle is all healed up’, as Waverly put it. It’s not a bad assignment: Warsaw, with an agent named Klaczko, investigating possible criminal activity within the Red Army. Illya isn’t thrilled about revisiting his old army days, but seeing Warsaw has been on his bucket list. Napoleon’s been before, sometime before the war, he remembers him saying. It’s supposed to be beautiful and Illya’s a little sad that he won’t be able to see it with him.

He tells him over lunch that day, at a little corner cafe Napoleon likes to eat at. There aren’t any strawberry blintzes but they do sell burgers with fries and salad and Illya has never said no to a good burger before.

“When do you leave?” Napoleon asks.

“Tomorrow at eight. Not so bad for flight time.”

“No, no it’s not. Is Gaby driving you?”

Illya nods as he takes another bite of his burger. It’s almost halfway through and he considers ordering a second. The tables in this cafe are small, Illya notes, and his knees keep brushing against Napoleon’s. He can feel his foot pressed up against the side of his own. It’s a pleasant sensation; he only wishes he could reach across the table and grab Napoleon’s hand, but the burger in between both of his own would make that a rather tricky feat.

“I’ve been to Warsaw, you know,” Napoleon says. He’s lit a cigarette and the smoke drifts around in the air. He takes another drag, tapping the ashes with a flip of the finger as smoke billows out his nose. The other hand is wrapped around the delicate china handle of a coffee cup.

“I remember. You told me.”

“You have to remember to try Polish pierogi and kielbasa. There’s also a mushroom soup I think you’ll like but I forget the name.”

He taps the cigarette again; Illya is mesmerized by his simple and elegant movements.“I’m going to miss you, you know,” he says, “I’ll have to play pinochle all by myself.”

“I will miss you too.”

Napoleon’s hand is now off the handle of the cup, fingers lying idly on the table. It would be so easy to reach across the table and grab it.

“You’ll stop by, won’t you? After the mission?” Napoleon’s fingers begin to drum out a quiet rhythm on top of the table.

“Of course.”

 

* * *

There are streets in Warsaw made of old stone that remind Illya of Italy. They shine dark grey when they’re wet with August rain, the sun on them makes them glimmer. Clouds speckle through the sky and the smell of rain still hangs in the air but it’s still warm, warm enough Illya doesn’t regret not bringing a jacket.

He strolls side by side with Klaczko, her blonde curls swinging back and forth, the click of her heels sounding with a faint echo as they pass through the streets. They pass by bookshops and shoe shops and dress shops and soap shops; any kind of shop you can imagine. The air smells clean and new and vaguely of smoke; the scent of an approaching autumn. August is almost over and the summer days have gotten shorter.

He thinks this place must be really beautiful in the fall and wonders if they might be lucky enough to land themselves a mission back to Poland in November, but he doubts it. That’s alright, there’s always next year. And besides, Napoleon is already making plans to take some time off and drive them upstate for a day or two; he says fall on the East Coast isn’t to be missed. Illya thinks the same of Russia in the winter. There's the Neva River, frozen in the winter months, the bridges with the hazy lampposts shining over the icy water, the cool fog that hangs in the air and gives the night a sense of magic. One day he hopes to back there, but lately he’s been thinking about Paris.

It’s strange, really, to think of anything of the future in a definite sense; he has never made plans this far ahead. In fact, he’s never made plans at all. He’s spent the most of his life living on the whims of the KGB, always prepared to pack up and go, never caring about where he’s leaving or where he’s going next. It almost makes him nervous when he realizes how much time the future may hold. He could have years with U.N.C.L.E., maybe only months, but he likes to pretend it will be for a long time. It’s become different now, the traveling, and he finds himself making more plans more often and wonders when the world became such an exciting place.

On the right Illya catches sight of a little cafe, an outdoor spot with tables and chairs set around under rain-stained awnings, waiters passing in and out of the shop itself, balancing plates on silver trays.

“Let’s stop here,” he says.

“What?” Klaczko turns to him in protest, a serious woman with steel grey eyes that glare up at him.

“I am hungry.”

“Are you crazy? Illya–”

“It will not take long.”

“Fine,” she huffs. They take a seat at the table and when the waiter comes Klaczko puts his order in for him; pierogi and kielbasa, just as Napoleon recommended.

And he was right; he loves it, pierogi especially. They’re different from the ones his mother made but the meat is just as good and tender in his mouth. As he takes a bite he wonders if Napoleon has a recipe for them somewhere in that binder of his, he might have to persuade him to make them once his arm is out of that cast.

(Though, if Illya is going to be honest, he’s thinking of asking for the recipe for himself. He wants to surprise Napoleon on the day he gets the cast off but he’s still searching for the right dish to make)

They make another small stop, too, at a leather shop on the edges of the city. It’s run by a frail old man with glasses perched on his crooked nose, thin gold wire frames lying crooked on his face. He’s amiable and talkative; a pity Illya’s Polish isn’t very good because he can’t understand the things he’s saying and Klaczko keeps having to translate back an forth.

Eventually he is able to purchase the suitcase he saw in the window; perfect light brown leather, simple clasps, sleek and elegant. It costs him more than he would usually spend on anything but it is, after all, a gift. The man looks at him funny when he asks to have it wrapped but he still has the image of Gaby’s sweater in his mind with the gauzy wrapping paper and the fancy label so the man gives him a big bag, full to the brim with the best tissue paper in the shop.

 

* * *

Illya’s plane lands in the early evening. He steps off the tarmac a little after six and by the time he’s gotten his luggage, hailed a taxi, and gotten into the elevator it's only a few minutes past eight. He knocks on the door and it’s only a few moments before Napoleon swings it open, dressed in a green sweater and a pair of slacks, a large grin on his face.

“Welcome back, Illya,” he says and Illya steps into the apartment, smelling something cooking in the kitchen.

“I made you dinner. Unless you ate on the flight?”

Illya nods. “I did. It was terrible. Yogurt and cheese. Who can live off yogurt and cheese?”

“This is coming from a man who doesn’t even keep eggs in his apartment.”

Illya huffs. “That’s different; I have you to cook for me.” He drops his suitcase by the door and follows Napoleon into the kitchen.

“That you do, and tonight I’ve made you a good soup. It’s chicken noodle, the best for your stomach after a long flight, or at least it has been in my experience. It’s also easy to keep warm; I didn’t know when you were coming back.”

“Sounds delicious.”

They take a seat at the kitchen table, the one by the three large windows that look over the city glittering below them from their position on the third floor. Napoleon doesn’t have drapes for them, he likes the view. It keeps the house awfully cold in winter and he always complains about U.N.C.L.E. not footing enough of the heating bill but Illya knows he wouldn’t trade those windows for the world.

They don’t talk much because Illya is busy shoveling soup into his mouth, he’s starving and didn’t get nearly enough to eat on the flight. Napoleon simply sits across from him, sipping some tea as he stares out into the blackness of the night. The apartment is quiet and maybe a little cool but Illya feels at home, almost more so than he does in his own apartment. He helps Napoleon clean up after he finishes his second bowl of chicken noodle soup, washing and drying the dishes because Napoleon still can’t get his cast wet.

“I got you something,” he says, when they’ve made their way into the living room and Napoleon is pouring himself a glass of scotch; he’s gotten pretty good at doing it one-handed.

Illya hands him the bag with the fancy label, tissue paper sticking up everywhere, it’s ridiculously large. The paper got a little crushed down in the plane but he did his best to smooth it back in the back of the taxi. Napoleon removes it piece by piece until he is pulling out the suitcase, a stray piece of paper still stuck to the side. Napoleon holds the bag up closer to admire it and the movement shakes the thin paper, causing it to slowly drift its way down to the ground.

“It’s beautiful.”

“You lost the other one back in Brazil,” Illya says. Napoleon never did get that suitcase back and he doesn’t think the Brazilian government has the time to look for and locate a nearly assassinated man's suitcase. As far as Napoleon knows it's still somewhere in a safehouse outside São Joaquim.

“Three suitcases in one year, can you imagine?” He turns to Illya, blue eyes sparkling with laughter, “I’m going to keep much better track of this one.”

“You better; it cost me a lot of money.”

“I have something for you, too.”

Napoleon goes back into the kitchen and comes out with a tray in hand, balancing it like a waiter in a fancy restaurant. There are two pastries on one of Napoleon’s pieces of fine china plates and next to them is a glass of milk. They look soft and delicious and they’re the cherry ones from Carolina’s that Illya loves.

“Are these for me?” he asks.

“Of course they’re for you, who else would they be for?” Napoleon puts the tray down on the coffee table, shoving aside a copy of _The Riders of High Rock,_ before returning to Illya, who is leaning against the sofa.

He leans in close to him, close enough to reach out and touch. Illya can smell his cologne, Armani, he thinks; like wood and smoke.  

“I’ve missed you,” he says, his blue eyes looking up at him. God, he’s beautiful up close. He feels his hand brush against his fingers. Illya swallows.

“Cowboy–”

Napoleon kisses him then, soft and sweet, his lips just barely pressing against Illya’s, and it’s over in a second.

“I’m sorry,” he says, stepping away, “I’ve just been wanting to do that.”

Illya’s lips are still buzzing “Since when?”

Napoleon shrugs. “A while now.”

“You could have told me sooner.”

That mischievous grin is back, lighting up his face and his blue Anna Karenina eyes. “I was waiting for the right moment.”

“You are ridiculous,” Illya says, for about the hundredth time, rolling his eyes and taking him by the jaw to kiss him again; a real kiss this time.

Napoleon tastes like whiskey and cigarettes and the slightest hint of chicken noodle soup. His lips are soft against his own, his hand warm against his waist. Illya’s hands wander into his hair, feeling the slick feeling of his pomade and the weight of his curls, traveling down to the back of his neck, onto his cheeks. He kisses him over and over, hands exploring everywhere they can. God, he could do this forever.

Illya pushes him away gently, loving the way Napoleon’s cashmere sweater feels beneath his fingers “I have to eat my pastry; they are no good the next day, you know.”

Napoleon laughs at that, loud and genuine. “God, I’ve missed you, Peril.”

He kisses him once again, another quick jerk away before Illya can kiss him back, and throws himself onto the sofa. “Come sit down and tell me all about Warsaw.”

Illya sits down, wrapping an arm around him. He’s moved the pastry plate to the center of the table. He grabs one and hands it to Napoleon, keeping the other for himself, the glass of milk within reach. They're just as good as he remembers. He wonders for a moment if he’d be able to taste the cherry on Napoleon’s lips if he were to lean over and kiss him again.

“So? What was Warsaw like?”

Illya’s hand toys with the strands of Napoleon’s hair. “Very beautiful.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Literature Referenced in This Fic (god I know I'm pretentious for even having this section):
> 
> -Eugene Onegin - Alexander Pushkin  
> -Les enfants terribles - Jean Cocteau (I always liked the idea of Napoleon and Gaby bonding over lowkey fucked up French novels)  
> -The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky  
> -Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky  
> -Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (a favorite novel of mine if you couldn't tell)  
> -Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - Jerome K. Jerome  
> -Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desesperada - Pablo Neruda (the poetry book Illya is reading, also one of the greatest works of poetry ever published)  
> -Poema IX: Ebrio de trementina - Pablo Neruda (from the above mentioned collection. Source of 'drunk with pine and long kisses')  
> -War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy  
> -The Night - Alexander Pushkin (the first poem Illya recites)  
> -'A night, a street, a lamp, a drugstore' - Alexander Blok (the second poem Illya recites)  
> -L'Étranger - Albert Camus  
> -The Riders of High Rock - Louis L'amour
> 
> 2) L'homme plus merveilleux du monde = the most wonderful man in the world
> 
> 3) The title comes from the song 'Heureuse' ('Happy') by Edith Piaf, the song I imaged Napoleon and Illya listening to in this piece.


End file.
